


Satellite

by rryoutah



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Confession, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Introspection, M/M, Mentions of past homophobia, Office AU, Pining Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Self-Indulgent, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Snk MiniBang, Swearing, mentions of past violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-11 20:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7906294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rryoutah/pseuds/rryoutah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>December, January<br/>Or at least, January to December.<br/>That’s how long it takes Levi to get to know Eren. Twelve months.<br/>It only takes him six to fall in love. </p><p>#</p><p>Levi pines after the IT tech in his building.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. January - June

**December, January**

 

Or at least, January to December.

 

That’s how long it takes Levi to get to know Eren. Twelve months.

 

It only takes him six to fall in love.

 

#

 

The thing is, routine is optimum for Levi.

 

It provides stability, reliability and comfort. It’s consistent. It’s automatic. It’s easy.

 

Levi’s routine has been the same for years: wake up, cuddle with his cat, eat breakfast with his cat, shower, get ready for work, go to work, try to prevent his desktop from failing on him whilst he works with numbers, remember to eat, socialise, come home, eat dinner with his cat, do any at-home work that is required, read, cuddle with his cat, sleep.

 

Some things, of course, are a minor interruption in the general week. Grocery shopping, filling his car, visiting his mother, office parties, anniversaries, birthdays, etc. But as far as things go, Levi’s life is pretty… organised. Predictable. Controlled.

 

Until Eren fucking Jaeger.

 

#

 

“No.”

 

Levi’s eyebrow flickers, his concentration broken.

 

“No, no, no, no, _no_!”

 

Petra’s cry lifts many heads, Levi’s included. He knows what’s happened before he can be bothered to ask—she’s banging a curled fist on the desk beside her laptop and gritting her teeth together at the screen. Her eyebrows are knitted tightly in quiet fury. She’s been compared to a hamster before for that anger, because of her height, but trust—she’s no ‘small pet’. She has an upper body strength that has even Levi’s eyebrows arching at times.

 

“Did you save?” Mike asks from the coffee maker a couple of metres away. Before he even has an answer, he places his mug back on the table and begins walking away through the glass doors. “I’ll call IT upstairs.”

 

“Hopefully they’ll be able to recover the document.” Levi adds once Mike has left the room, saving his own work while he has the chance. All he needs is to lose a day’s work and end up redoing it all at home whilst his cat sits on his shoulder demanding affection. If she isn’t on his shoulder, she’s on the paperwork. He’d invest in somewhere she can’t reach, but Petra the cat is like Petra the human—stubborn.

 

“They won’t.” She grunts and covers her face with her hands, shaking her head into them. “I hadn’t saved it at all. I was just about to, after this next paragraph, and then it went blue again.”

 

Levi blinks as Petra scrapes her fingernails through her auburn hair and gathers it into a ponytail at the back of her head, securing it with a black elastic. It mulls in his head that perhaps he should warn her to save her work more often, but her look of determination tells him she’s already aware of her mistake, and he’s not about to go out of his own way to be unhelpful.

 

“If you tell Erwin, he’ll be able to replace your system.” God knows that’d be his first plan of action. Levi doesn’t know if it’s sheer luck or something else that his desktop has never drastically failed on him before, but if it did, he wouldn’t be as patient as Petra. He’d take that piece of shit into Erwin’s office, dump it on his desk, and demand a new one.

 

“I don’t want to bother him.” Petra answers, already tapping at some keys to see if she can fix the problem on her own. When that fails, she shakes the mouse around the table.

 

“How are you supposed to work if your system keeps failing?” Levi asks. “We can bring it up at the next meeting.” Ignoring any response, because he’s already dreading the day this will inevitably happen to him, he scrawls a neat note on the stack of post-its he has on his desk. He knows Erwin will provide her with a new one. He’s not an unreasonable boss.

 

“They’re sending someone down. Should be here any minute.” Mike picks his coffee back up, leans against the table with the snacks, and observes the room with his mug at his nose.

 

Knowing that nothing else can be done until an expert arrives and not one for motivational speeches, Levi gets back to his own work and notices from his peripheral vision that Petra continues to work on paper until her computer is back up and running. Not just stubborn—resourceful, too.

 

If only Petra the cat could work on paper. His workload would be halved.

 

It only takes five minutes for the specialist to walk through the glass doors. ‘Specialist’ looks too mature for him. He stands out in the sea of expensive shirts and suits instantly, with an open fire-truck red flannel and jeans that have purposeful—or maybe not, since he looks so young—tears near the knees. Levi takes in his tall frame and bronze skin when he walks towards Petra, slightly disturbed at how his ability to look away has vanished. It’s not his computer that’s playing up. It’s none of his business, really. Usually it’s easy to ignore the IT technicians.

 

Not this one.

 

“…Miss Petra?” His voice is hesitant, but not nervous.

 

“Just Petra is fine.” She beams at him and rolls aside on her office chair to let him have a look at the damage He bends closer to the screen, but by the look on his face, he recognises the problem immediately and begins doing something to her computer, getting on his knees so he’s eye-level with the monitor. Now that Levi can no longer see him, it’s significantly easier to get back to his own work.

 

Until…

 

“Did you update or install any new drivers lately?” As if this new, interesting stranger has a captivating voice as well. He tries to keep it quiet, considerate of the working people around him, but it’s too youthful for quietness.

 

Petra’s expression is blank.

 

“Probably not then.” The boy answers, appearing at the side of her desktop with a gentle smile. “I’ll check your RAM before opening up your base unit. Don’t wanna take everything apart if I don’t have to.”

 

She seems satisfied with that, nodding and responding appropriately. She offers him her chair, and then settles on getting him one of his own from the staff room, mumbling about how she doesn’t want to be the cause for his knees hurting—though, she adds, that probably won’t be a problem since he looks so young. He responds with some teasing in his voice that he’s only twenty. Twenty, seriously? When did Erwin start employing kids?

 

Whilst she’s gone, Levi unashamedly inspects him, eyes trailing from his bright shirt to his mess of brown hair to the lanyard hanging around his neck. What a nerd.

 

A nerd Levi’s itching to know the name of, though.

 

“Eren.” Mike calls from behind them. “Coffee?”

 

What a coincidence.

 

“No thanks.” He responds from over the desktop. Levi watches his mouth move as he replies. “I don’t like coffee yet.”

 

So his name is Eren, Levi notes, no longer trying to read the name on the swinging card around his neck. He seems to know what he’s doing on a computer, typing rapidly the moment Petra’s starts back up and sings the familiar tune. When Levi can finally retreat to his own work, he’s already decided that when he experiences any malfunctions (and he will, because technology is a shit), he’ll ask for Eren.

 

And it has nothing to do with the storms in his eyes.

 

He just seems to know what he’s doing.

 

Whilst Petra’s still gone looking for a chair, Levi struggles to concentrate on the numbers on his screen. Usually, he can avoid looking at things that capture his interest, but 1) Eren’s loud clacking on the keyboard can’t be ignored, and 2) Levi’s trying to deny that the boy even has his interest in the first place. A multitude of debates are going on in his head, somehow all centring around Eren the new IT guy.

 

Just as he’s getting back into his groove, a voice ejects him from his focus. Again.

 

For fuck’s sake.

 

“Hey, uh… s’cuse me? Can I borrow one of your post-it’s a sec?”

 

Levi looks up from his screen without moving his head, visibly vexed that his concentration has been shattered once again.

 

“Please?” Eren adds quickly, as if Levi’s stare reminds him of his manners. His face is visible between the two desktops in front of Levi.

 

Instead of responding verbally, Levi picks up the block of yellow squares and passes it to him through the laptops, returning immediately to his work once Eren takes it.

 

“Thanks, uh…”

 

Glancing back up at the drawn out sound, Levi meets Eren’s expectant gaze and answers automatically.  “Levi.”

 

“Right. Thanks, Levi.”

 

Petra comes back without any further interaction, and Eren stays for at least half an hour. Levi doesn’t mean to, but he listens every time he speaks, having to remind himself afterwards that the health of Petra’s system is none of his business. Eren finalises that the RAM is fine, and so is the hard drive, but that hard disc space was probably the problem. Whilst he talks her through what that means, Levi checks his own stats, making sure that his won’t act up anytime soon.

 

“If you get any more problems, just let me know. And remember to save!”

 

Levi tells himself his skin doesn’t tingle when Eren remembers to say goodbye to him.

 

#

 

Eren doesn’t come back for a number of weeks, and whilst that’s a good thing because it means none of their computers have broken down, it still leaves Levi feeling like a punctured tyre.

 

It’s well into February now, and his routine has carried on as normal, with the exception that now, he has to deny the effect Eren had on him.

 

If he has lunch in the cafeteria (which is doubtful, he’d never eat cafeteria lunch, but he does take his own there sometimes), he doesn’t notice that he’s specifically looking for him until he feels his eyes brushing rapidly across every person who walks through the double doors. Hanji’s starting to ask if he has something medically wrong, and if she can experiment. No—the answer is always no.

 

And if he has lunch in his office, his eyes are plastered to the window, scouring the streets down below to see if he exits the building. The elevator trips in the morning and evening are now full of glancing eyes instead of his usual stare-at-the-doors-until-they-open habit, and someone crosses his mind now and then when he sees red and lanyards.

 

It’s frustrating that he has less control over his thoughts and actions. Meeting Eren was simple and not at all life-altering, so Levi is lost as to why the boy continues to pop up in his thoughts unannounced and encourage him to look around the room for his face.

 

Honestly, this kid is nothing special, even if those letters are in his job title.

 

Levi considers it a nuisance that his brain is preoccupied with thoughts of Eren, and rightly so, considering how much longer it took him to finish his at-home work than usual. But on a few occasions, he has indeed looked twice when he realised that, to his joy, Eren was in the same room as him. It happens more so in the elevator than in the lunch or staff rooms. At least twice, he’s been sprinting towards it before it closes, hair still ruffled from his pillow and collar inside-out.

 

 _What a kid,_ Levi thought at the time. Anyone would think he’s jealous or bitter that Eren is younger than him, but he’s the opposite. He’s curious, for once in his life. Levi’s a smart man, and he knows a lot of things, but about Eren, he knows nothing. Who is Eren?

 

Is Eren the type of boy who parties and hits on girls and is generally—what kids call these days—a fuckboy? Does he like to read? Does he have a library card? Does he know how to cook? Does he have a gym membership? Is he one of those little shits that puts the milk in before the cereal? Does he even have the time to eat cereal? Is his mother pouring it down his throat in the mornings, or does he live alone? How did Mike know his name in the office before anyone else did?

 

Who the fuck is this kid, and why is he imprinted in Levi’s brain like the way Petra’s food sticks to her fur?

 

Cat-Petra. Human-Petra is a very clean eater.

 

#

 

Near the end of March, Levi thinks he has a grip on his curiosity. Eren is a long-gone fad, and his thoughts centre more around Petra and when her groomer will be available to clip her nails, or what he’s having for dinner that night, or when he should call his mother to update her that he’s still alive and hasn’t croaked it yet.

 

Something that bothers him is the disappointment he felt in returning to his old routine. It wasn’t like returning a book to the library (which he no longer did, not since that sign at the library that asked some customers to stop ejaculating on the books), or returning home from a holiday. It held the same emotion as when he’d once tried to fix a bad habit, only to fail and resort back to the unhealthy habit. It’s that realisation that he’s unhappy with something in his routine life that eats at him.

 

He should be happy. He has a great job, a great apartment, great friends. He even has a great cat. Mulling over what he doesn’t have should not be a thing. A habit. But it is.

 

So much for his thoughts revolving around his cat.

 

Things mostly go bust when he’s in the cafeteria. Hanji is telling him about the effects of a pet owner’s personality on the pet’s personality. It’s something she’s dabbling in whilst she volunteers at an animal shelter—that’s one of the reasons he didn’t hand Petra right over to her when she was a kitten. Hanji would’ve spent all her time analysing the poor thing instead of letting her live.

 

She says he should train Petra to high-five, and that’s when the living daylights are scared out of him. Not at the thought of Petra high-fiving—at the abrupt bang of a party popper and then the cheering. Somewhere at his left, there are around five brats swarming around another, seated, brat, taking photos and passing a cone-shaped hat around and hugging.

 

It registers that it’s someone’s birthday when his heartrate slows. Then the blond guy—who’s built more like a rugby player than someone suited for office work—moves away, and Eren’s face is visible. The party cone is on his head. There’s a badge attached to one side of his open navy shirt. Someone thrusts a gift bag in front of him.

 

It sucks Levi back in, like one of those clever poems that make you think, or an anchor in the ocean, or like a very powerful vacuum. He’s wondering about Eren. It’s obviously his birthday today, but—how old is he? Is he twenty-one, or is he one of those people who uses his new age in the months before his birthday, to get used to saying it? Did he get many gifts? Does he do special things for his birthdays, like go out for dinner with his family? What birthday was his favourite?

 

God, he sounds like Hanji. Ready to strap the kid up and examine him, observe him, analyse him.

 

 Levi leaves the cafeteria with his curiosity exceptionally un-gripped.

 

#

 

April showers bring forth May flowers. What else does April bring? Fucking Eren.

 

“Mike.”

 

“Hm?”

 

“I need you to call that kid.”

 

“What kid?”

 

“The one that fixes things. Computers.”

 

“Eren or Jean?”

 

“Eren.”

 

“Right.”

 

Mike’s hands are so large that he can do that thing—pick up the phone, hold it with three fingers and a thumb, and use the remaining to push the buttons. Levi waits beside him in his office chair, his screen an alarming shade of blue with a lot of writing on it that he doesn’t understand.

 

“What’s wrong with it?” Mike asks. Levi can hear the phone ringing on the other end.

 

“It’s gone blue and I’m not touching that shit to make it even worse.”

 

Chuckling, Mike passes that info on to whoever answers the phone and when he hangs up with his unnecessarily huge hands, he spins in his chair and covers his moustache with his pen. “Eren’s on his way down.”

 

“I hope that’s _your_ pen and not one you found.” Levi comments as he rolls back to his desk.

 

With a cringe, Mike puts the pen back on the desk. “Doesn’t smell like mine. Good call.”

 

Whilst waiting on Eren, Levi tries to tell himself that he could fix the blue screen that abruptly interrupted his work. It doesn’t look too intimidating after he’s stared at it for a while. It probably only requires a restart. Last year, he would’ve launched the desktop out of the window in a fit of rage if he ever encountered such a shut-down, or he would’ve unashamedly whipped out the manual. Now, well… it gives him a chance at interaction with Eren.

 

Not that he’s any good at interaction.

 

If he’s lucky, Eren will expose his fuckboy nature, or start picking his nose, or do _something_ that will turn Levi off enough to stop thinking about him and considering these inconveniences as good just because it means he gets to see him. He’d even take something smaller—a mention that he hates cats, because Petra is the goddamn world to him, or a snarky comment that hints to his homophobic side. _Anything._

 

“Hey, Levi.” Eren walks in way more confidently when he knows who needs his help. Levi doesn’t say hello back—by the time he’s decided he’ll say ‘hello’ instead of ‘hey’, like he’s fucking twenty-three again, it’s been too long to comfortably respond. Instead, he rolls aside on his chair to provide room for him.

 

“Ooh,” Eren sucks some air in between his teeth, probably to signify how shitty Levi’s situation is. “You’ve got a BSOD.”

 

“Am I supposed to know what that means?”

 

“Just means blue screen of death.” Eren kneels on the floor beside him and starts doing things to his computer. “It’s actually a good thing. Means your system has shut down to prevent damage.”

 

“But it’s shitty that there’s damage in the first place.” Levi replies, watching him sit back on his heels whilst he waits for it to restart. Shitty as well that now he can’t work.

 

“Right,” Eren agrees with a smile. “We just have to restart and pinpoint the damage, then try and prevent it from happening again.”

 

“Eren.” Petra leans her elbow on her desk and her chin on her fist as she looks at them through the desktops. Her smile is something between smug and teasing. “Did I hear it was your birthday the other day?”

 

Ducking his head and breathing a laugh, Eren nods and rubs his palms against his thighs. Well, that—that was almost disgusting. Ideally, he’d wash his hands or whip out an anti-bacterial hand wash—actually, if he whipped that out, Levi’d be in love—but wiping hands against jeans? No. Unfortunately, not ‘no’ enough to turn him off. “Probably. It was on the thirtieth. Sorry if my friends made a racket.”

 

Huffing so low nobody can hear it, Levi considers writing out a mass e-mail.

_Thanks @ Petra Ral (the human) for making me look like an asshole by not bringing up the kid’s birthday first._

 

Her smile loses its teasing and becomes genuine. “Not at all. Happy Birthday.” She tells him.

 

He brightens. “Thank you.”

 

“Many happy returns.” Levi adds on quietly, looking at his computer to see if it’s started back up yet.

 

“Thanks.” Eren’s face is still like the goddamn sunshine. Levi almost gets sunburn when he looks at him. He should put it on his to-do list to break out the SPF50 whenever Eren’s around.

 

“Did you have a good day? Do anything special?” Petra presses, ignoring her work to lean forward and into the conversation.

 

“Yeah, it was great. Had to work the first half of the day, but—”

 

Levi butts in, voice portraying disbelief. “Erwin made you work on your birthday? I would’ve told him to go and fuck himself.”

 

He thinks that might’ve been too sudden until Eren grins, wide and toothy. “It’s fine. He didn’t know until later that day. He actually gave me a card and time and a half.”

 

“He wouldn’t make us work on Christmas anyways.” Petra points out.

 

Eren’s eyebrows arch. “Your birthday is on Christmas day? Sweet. Do you just get a shitload of gifts then, or do your parents make you celebrate like a week early?”

 

Levi tries to ignore that Petra’s smile has gone back to smug. “I get a shitload more than I deserve.” He reasons. And it’s the truth. He didn’t deserve the elaborate coffee maker Erwin got him, nor the expensive vacuum he’d been making heart-eyes at for a month from Petra. He didn’t even deserve the collection of t-shirts printed with swear words on them from Hanji.

 

“Can you put in your password? Promise I won’t look.” Eren makes a point to cover his eyes and then peek over the top of them, as if to contradict his statement. Fucking kid. Even Levi admits that should’ve been cringe-worthy.

 

Cringe-worthy and disgusting, but Levi’s heart doesn’t seem to give a shit. Now he’s preparing his speech in court for when Eren murders someone right in front of him and he still thinks the sun shines out of his ass.

 

He taps it in, then presses enter with his pinky.

 

Eren identifies the problem, Petra chats away to him whilst doing her work, and Levi resists the urge to spin around in his chair whilst he waits.

 

Just as Levi’s beating himself up about not being as conversational—god, he didn’t even think of offering him a coffee or a drink like Petra did—Eren leans back on his heels, slaps his palms against his thighs, and blows out a satisfied huff.

 

“Right.” He starts. “That should be you. If you get another blue screen pretty quickly, then it might mean there’s a problem with the actual computer, but if you get one like, say, every… year or so, it probably means it’s nothing to worry about.”

 

“Right.” Levi echoes, rolling into his space as Eren gets up from his knees. “Thank you.”

 

“No probs.” Eren smiles, but then the edges become mischievous and he winks whilst walking backwards. “Might wanna change your password, though. It’s on the weaker side.”

 

“Little dipshit.” Levi mutters under his breath, staring even when that denim shirt has disappeared out of the glass doors and behind the wall.

 

#

 

“What’ve you done?” Is the first question out of his mouth when Petra’s more affectionate than usual.

 

Levi picks her up as he’s locking the door so she won’t run outside. She’s a little shit at the best of times, so when she greets him with a high tail and a purr (purring is strictly reserved for 4:30AM), he’s curious. More times than he’d like to admit has he considered installing cameras in his house to see what she gets up to while he’s at work. Then again, he isn’t sure if he wants to see her cry at the door for fifteen minutes after he leaves.

 

The first thing that greets him when he turns around is her toy box, tipped on its side with half of her toys scattered around it, and then a couple that have been batted around the floor. She continues to purr in his arms, but if he dared try to kiss her, she’d stop him with a paw against his mouth immediately.

 

That’s why he crooks his finger under and around her neck a few times, then drops her onto four paws. “Looks like you had fun.” He comments as she goes over to the rug and stretches on it. “That makes one of us.” He mumbles, toeing off his shoes and exchanging them for his slippers.

 

After he’s cleaned out her litterbox and made dinner for both of them (even though Petra’s dinner consists of squeezing cat mush out of a packet), Levi sits down to pull out his laptop and finish any work that he’s left lingering behind. He expects a lot, since his computer broke down _and_ he was distracted by Eren. That’s when he notices his old manual sticking out of one of the pockets of his laptop bag—the one he always consulted for any problems he had with his computers. Out of interest, he flicks through the brochure, eyes scanning to look for a blue screen.

 

It’s there, and it says almost everything Eren said. _So, the kid’s a walking manual._

 

What would a manual want with a stoic, robotic, _boring_ finance worker?

 

The wink Eren sent him earlier floods his mind. Logic tells him it was a joke, a gesture, nothing serious. His heart is having a hard time believing that.

 

Shame or embarrassment or _something_ creeps up his neck when he rolls the manual up in his fist. “No telling anyone where this went.” He tells Petra, and then dumps it into the bin.

 

What would a stoic, robotic, _boring_ finance worker want with a manual…?

 

When he had Eren?

 

#

 

After Eren has directly helped him with his computer, he becomes like a thorn in Levi’s side. A very pretty thorn that Levi doesn’t necessarily want to pluck out.

 

“Hey, Levi!” Eren yells from a mile away in the goddamn foyer of their building, eyes lighting up as he notices Levi walking towards the elevator. He turns to the two people he was talking to and then runs towards him, one hand on the backpack strap on his shoulder and the other clutching an envelope.

 

He huffs out a breath as he slows his run right in front of Levi, his footsteps heavy and… young.

 

God, he’s not _that_ young. Levi’s technically still young. He has to stop thinking of himself as the age his knees make him think he is.

 

That’s what he gets for vigorously cleaning since the age of fifteen.

 

“How are you?”

 

Levi doesn’t even know how to answer that. Not when it comes to Eren. If it was Hanji, he’d grab a pole, situate it between them and say ‘not fucking today, Satan’, and if it was Erwin, his automatic response would include a ton of swear words and honesty.

 

“Fine.” He croaks out, forgetting to return the question.

 

“Good.” Eren smiles, raising his eyes to watch the elevator steadily fall from level fourteen. When he looks back at Levi, he holds up the envelope in his hand, chuckling as if Levi had actually asked about it. “I just got my dog vaccinated. Now he’s all set for the year!”

 

Levi tips his chin up in acknowledgement, eyes drifting towards the elevator doors. At least he’s a responsible pet owner.

 

“Do you have any pets, Levi?”

_Fuck. He’s probably one of those aggressive dog-lovers who hate cats because society says you can only like one._

 

He inhales, waiting for the disappointment to hurdle him. “I have a cat.”

 

He wants to add ‘ _what the fuck are you doing? This isn’t the script’_ when Eren gasps and ‘aww’s’. “What’s his name?”

 

Impatient, he shifts from one foot to the other and huffs out of his nose, eyes plastered to the decreasing numbers above the elevator. “Her name is Petra.”

 

“Aww, Pet—Petra?” Eren’s neck almost cracks when he whips his head around, thick eyebrows in a furrow. “Like the Petra who works on your floor? Why did you call your cat after Petra?”

 

Levi frowns at him, lips tightening together. “How do you know Petra wasn’t named after my cat?”

 

Eren snorts and shows his teeth. “Well, I’m guessing your cat isn’t, like, thirty or fort—”

 

Levi arches an eyebrow at him.

 

Eren swallows, grin gone. “Y’know, never mind. Petra’s really young. My dog’s called Mike.” As the elevator doors open, Levi steps aside to let people out, then walks in and presses the number for floor seven. Eren leans over him to thumb eleven.

 

When he settles beside Levi, the box empty, he keeps going. “Funny story, he’s actually named after the Mike who works with you. Did you know he has a nose like a bloodhound? That’s how we started joking about calling my puppy Mike—well, he’s not a puppy anymore, but y’know. Dogs have good senses. Mike has good senses.” He actually elbows Levi after that statement, wiggling his eyebrows. “Get it?”

 

“I get it.” Levi blows some air out of his nose. It doesn’t sound like a laugh, more like he has something stuck in his sinuses, but Eren seems satisfied and keeps chatting.

 

“I know it’s not like, clever, but the name suits him anyways. He’s a big St. Bernard. He had huge paws, even as a puppy! How old is your cat?”

 

“Her veterinarian estimates her at five months.” Levi answers, side-watching for Eren’s reaction.

 

His cheeks grow plumper as he smiles. “So she’s just a baby! I’d love to see Mike with some kittens. He’d make them look so tiny. This is your floor.” He nods to the doors before they even open. “See you later!”

 

Taking a moment, Levi stares at the doors and wonders if that actually just happened.

 

Then he kicks himself in the ass, for not saying goodbye, and for not asking how Eren was when Eren first asked him. He’s almost at the stage where he needs flash cards for talking to a crush.

 

#

 

May is when the blood donation crew come by and use their building as a venue. On the first and second days, it’s open to all employees, and on the third and fourth, it’s open to the close public. It’s always hectic and noisy but fuck if Levi doesn’t love that scent of cleanliness in the air and shovelling medical gloves and hand sanitiser into his laptop bag when he’s on his way home.

 

Last year, he didn’t even have to. He got talking with his nurse over cleanliness, and she gave him a bottle to take away. She made it into his list of top ten people in his life.

 

He goes down at three in the afternoon, a comfortable amount of time after lunch and before he’ll go home and have dinner. It’s the last place he’d expect to feel distracted, given his interest in both biology and sterilisation, but then who’s sitting up on the first fucking fold-out bed?

 

Eren.

 

“Oh, Levi!” Eren’s eyes go wide when he sees him. He feels like one of those teenagers who accidentally made friends with a child and now the child will never stop calling on him and interrupting his teenager things. “Are you donating today?”

 

“I always do.” He says to him. The distance from the fold-out reception desk and Eren’s bed is lengthy, and a couple of people look up at his voice as if they’ve never heard it before. God.

 

“Me too.” Eren holds up his arm, complete with a blood pressure machine and a needle in his arm.

 

If it’s not bad enough that he continues talking to Levi throughout his entire sign-in process, keeping their conversation entirely public and loud, just as Levi’s being taken to his own bed, Eren waves his arm frantically as well, gaining the attention of his nurse.

 

“Oh, oh! Can you put him here so we can chat?” He gestures to the bed beside him.

 

Of course the nurses are fucking enamoured with him (Levi can’t talk), so they oblige him and park Levi’s ass in the bed right beside Eren. As Levi hikes himself up and starts unbuttoning his shirt to pull an arm out, there’s a look of achievement flashing in Eren’s eyes.

 

“Hey, we’re like blood brothers.”

 

“Christ.” Levi breathes when he turns his face away to get his arm out of his shirt. Underneath is a vest top, but he isn’t afraid of showing off his body. However, he is feeling like he should curl up or hide his stomach or _something_ , because Eren is wearing a sweater loose enough for him to simply roll up his sleeves, and here Levi is, presenting his undershirt like the old man he is.

 

Eren’s still snickering at his own joke when Levi turns back around. “How is Petra?”

 

That puts a frown on Levi’s face. He knows Petra has more trouble with her computer, but that doesn’t mean he’s qualified to have a crush on her instead of him. Then again, he couldn’t blame Eren either. Petra is social, and pretty, and knows how to fucking say happy birthday to him.

 

“She’s—fine. Why?”

 

As if catching on to Levi’s unfriendly tone, Eren’s smile vanishes and he blinks. “Well, I’m just wondering. I told you about Mike, getting his vaccination, so I was just wondering how your cat is. Have you gotten her vaccinated yet?”

 

The cat. Petra. The cat. _Right._

 

Levi tries to hide his pleasure. “She’s fine. She doesn’t need an annual vaccination yet, she’s only five months.” He reminds, momentarily ejecting himself from the conversation to answer his nurse. He recites his birthdate to her.

 

“You were born in 1986? Damn. Another year older and there’d have been ten years between us. I was born in 1995.”

 

Okay—shouting his birthdate out in the entire lobby? It’s almost a deal-breaker.

 

But then he looks at Eren, looks at those blue-green eyes, and he’s a complete sucker. He’s fucking whipped and he isn’t even in a relationship. Anyone else and he’d have at least head-locked them, but not Eren.

 

He’s becoming soft.

 

“I’ll stick with the nine years.” Levi responds. “I’m not in my thirties just yet.”

 

“But you will be in December, right?” Eren reminds. “The twenty-fifth?”

 

“Thanks for the reminder.” Levi says dryly.

 

Eren laughs at that. “No, I’m just making sure I have the right date. Y’know, so I can buy you a card. Wait—” His expression becomes deadly serious. “Should I buy you a birthday card, or a Christmas card?”

 

Levi makes a noise like a scoff, mostly to cover up the sensation of a needle penetrating his skin. “Don’t buy me anything, kid. Save your money.” And god, that response reminds him of his age again. It’s all anyone ever said to him as a kid, and now he’s saying it. May he rest in peace.

 

“Nah,” Eren replies, gaining a raised eyebrow from him. “I’ll buy you both. I don’t necessarily need to buy you it. Who says I don’t have left-over Christmas cards from last year?”

 

“Recycling is good,” is the only thing Levi can come up with.

 

“Yeah, it is,” Eren licks his lips. “I’d rather spend the money, though.”

 

From the corner of his eye, Levi can see Eren watching him. He’s fully turned on his bed, attention all on Levi. Probably trying to suss him out, find out what pushes his buttons. Whatever kids do these days. Except then, Eren pulls up his sweater to scratch at his tummy, and Levi can’t help but glance at that piece of skin that breaks up his clothes. His hip bone is nicely formed and bronzed and Levi’d be lying if he said he couldn’t see his thumb there as he’d pull Eren close and let their lips meet and—

 

Eren sniffs and rolls over onto his back, hair mussing up over the thin pillow. “I hope nobody’s stole that brownie.”

 

“What brownie?”

 

Eren glances at him, one arm under his head. “The brownie on the food table. We need to eat and drink something before we leave and that brownie has had my name on it from the start.”

 

The corner of Levi’s lip twitches. “I’m taking the brownie.”

 

“You wouldn’t.” With the arm attached to his blood bag, Eren lays it over his heart. “Come on, we’re blood brothers.”

 

Ten minutes later, when Eren’s arm is free from his needle but Lev is still attached, Eren returns from the food table with two cups of juice and a sad face.

 

“Someone took the brownie.” He sticks his bottom lip out exaggeratedly.

 

“Shame.” Levi replies, adopting Eren’s earlier position. Since sliding down the bed, he’s ended up with his free arm behind his head and his other out flat.

 

“Well,” Eren replied, bending one knee so he could sit half his ass on Levi’s bed. “At least I tried. If I hadn’t tried and the brownie was still there, someone else would’ve taken it.” 

 

It’s strange to feel so comfortable here—he’s worked here since he was fresh out of college (the perks of having an older best friend with a business handed to him on a platter), but never before had he lounged with an arm behind his head and his shirt half off his body, enjoying a chat with someone he only met approximately five months ago. It wasn’t that long ago he was considering quitting this job and finding one elsewhere because it felt like he was getting nowhere in his life. He was doing the same thing, day in, day out, and the excitement of feeling grown up and lucky in everything else _but_ love was dying off.

 

At twenty-one, he thought love could fuck itself, because he had a great apartment, a great job, and great friends, and what else could he possibly want? But slowly, starting with Erwin, his mind began to change. Erwin met someone he became so infatuated with that his work started slacking, and the business was no longer the most important thing in his life. Levi then watched Petra get engaged twice before marrying Auruo. Even Hanji ended up with her childhood best friend. They all seemed to have lives outside of work that were filled with other people and enrichment and he—did not have that.

 

It’s not that he didn’t try—of course he did. He once went out with a girl he suspected might have a crush on him. She always pestered him at the coffee shop they frequented. It turned out she just wanted a pathway into Erwin Smith’s business, and Levi was that pathway. That was back when he believed he could end up where Erwin, Petra, and Hanji were today. After a while, a handful of failed dates, and becoming comfortable with loneliness, Levi decided he just wasn’t cut out for that life.

 

But Eren—he sparked something in Levi that hadn’t been there in a number of years. It was something that—god, was he really admitting this to himself? —gave him a reason to believe. Believe he could be where the others were, believe he could have that life, believe he was worthy of it.

 

The circumstances were all off—he really didn’t think this through. He was just sucked in, without thinking of the consequences and how this could actually affect him negatively. Eren might not even be into men. He might be into people his own age. He might be into both—but just not into Levi. Even if all of that proved fruitless worrying about—he might have parents that disapprove of them. His own friends might tell him off for essentially becoming a cradle snatcher. Petra might not like him. Everything could go so, so wrong.

 

Somehow, Levi couldn’t pass up the chance.

 

Later, with a brownie from the café across the road in his hand and on the IT floor of the building, Levi tells himself: _at least he’s trying._

 

“Can you give this to Eren Jaeger?” He shoves it into the hand of someone dressed like Eren—did everyone on this floor dress like students? —with a nametag of ‘Jean’ and walks away.

 

As he shoves his elbow against the door to leave, he hears Jean shout, “Oi, Eren!”

 

#

 

May melts into June, and Petra melts Levi’s heart when she gets the all clear from her six month check up at the vet.

 

He takes her through the park on the way home—the sky is blue and the air is clear, and she never gets to stay outside for longer than a couple of seconds, considering he usually takes the car. He figures as a treat for growing so well and strong, he’ll show her the world she watches through the window.

 

Her cat carrier has a clear, tough plastic window in the front, so she can lie or sit and watch the world go by like she does at home. The only difference is she’s often jostled by Levi’s hip, because that’s where she ends up situated with the strap diagonal across his torso.

 

When it’s quiet, he tells her that the things above them are trees, and points out all the birds she might like to follow with her blue eyes. The scenery makes him wish he had some sort of balcony attached to his apartment—he’d put netting up over the exposed area and then let her wander outside more often. She’d like that.

 

“No way! Levi? I didn’t know you came to this par—is that Petra?!”

 

“Shit.” Levi huffs under his breath, turning around after he’s glanced behind him. He makes sure his mouth isn’t dirty and smooths down his shirt, then turns back around. “Eren. It is.”

 

In front of Eren is a massive dog—he really wasn’t joking about the paws—dragging him towards Levi by his leash. His ears are floppy and he looks fluffy and friendly, but god, all Levi can see is that drooling tongue and grunting nose and dirty paws.

 

“This is Mike.” Eren’s face is split in a grin—when did the sun come down to earth? —and his arms are uncovered for once, showing off biceps that could only develop after hours of effort in the gym.

 

“Mhm.” Levi acknowledges, trying to discreetly remove Petra from his eye-line. She’s never met a dog before, and he isn’t about to introduce her to one so large she might alert everyone within a five-mile radius that she’s unhappy.

 

Eren, however, seems to give no shits. He gets on his knees in front of her carrier and presses a finger to the plastic—looks like he’s cleaning that later. He coos at her and calls her name and tells her she’s gorgeous, and in return, she presses her nose up to the plastic and tries to sniff at him.

 

She becomes more interested in Mike when she sees the size of him, suddenly standing up and then sitting down and standing up again. Then she starts pressing her nose against the only crack she can find.

 

Eren looks like he’s never read a goddamn pet manual in his life, because he brings Mike right up to her window and points at him, saying “this is my puppy, Mike!” and then Mike is slobbering all over their divider and making whines probably because he can’t get inside to pant all over his new ‘friend’.

 

“She’s never met a dog before—” He goes to excuse any hissing or swatting she might do, but she doesn’t seem to care, so he stops.

 

“I think they like each other.” Eren stands again, shining his goddamn sunny rays proudly over his puppy. He looks up at Levi, eyes squinted, before they pop open. “Oh! Did you get my gift?”

 

“What gift?” Levi thinks back to the last time he received a wrapped-up gift with a ribbon.

 

“The shortcake!” Eren presses. “As a thank you. For the brownie.”

 

An “oh,” slips out of Levi’s mouth. He does remember that—the day Mike came to him, dropped a cellophane-wrapped block of caramel shortcake on his desk, and then stood over him inhaling as he ate it. “I remember. Thank you for that. You didn’t have to.”

 

Eren waves a hand. “It’s nothin’.” He starts walking alongside Levi when Levi picks up his pace again. “So what’re you doing here? Do you take Petra for walks?”

 

“No.” Levi takes a peek at her to make sure she’s okay—she is, lying and blinking at the things she sees around her. “She had a six-month check-up today. I was just bringing her home.”

 

“Everything go okay?” Eren asks, swapping Mike’s leash into his other hand.

 

Levi nods. “She’s healthy. Making good progress.”

 

“Good.” Eren says, the same way he did when they were at the elevator and Levi forgot to ask how he was back.

 

When they’re underneath some more trees and Levi can rest his squinting eyes, he notices that the blue mark he thought was a design on Eren’s shirt is not a design at all—in fact, his fingers twitch, it looks like a stain.

 

“What is that on your t-shirt?” He asks.

 

Eren pulls the dampness away from his skin and Levi’s skin crawls. “Oh. I spilled my slushie down myself. It’s no big deal.”

 

Levi stops in his tracks, lip curled up into something he thinks might be a sneer. “Are you twenty-one, or twelve?”

 

Eren circles his eyes to the sky as if he’s thinking. “I’m probably both. Are you my mom, or my dad?”

 

Levi scoffs. “Little shit.”

 

Grimacing for the first time since Levi’s seen him, Eren wrinkles his shirt in his hands as if to rid the fabric of any excess liquid. Despite his joke, it looks like it’s beginning to bother him.

 

“Why don’t you go home and change?”

 

“A-ah,” Eren chuckles as if he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t have. “Uh. I live a little bit away from here and I can’t… really be bothered going back right now. Unless you have to go home, then—! Then I’ll leave.”

 

That sounded fake as hell, but Levi wasn’t going to question him. He sighs, “follow me,” and then starts making his way back to his apartment.

 

“Follow you?” Eren questions. “Where are you going?!”

 

Levi only turns to say, “My apartment’s closer.”

 

The walk there is as Levi predicted: full of Eren chatting away, Mike dragging him everywhere, and that stain on his shirt becoming a complete eyesore to Levi. If he wasn’t so anxious to get that shirt off of Eren (and for all the wrong reasons), he might actually be jittery about having Eren come to his home. He knew it was clean—it rivalled a fucking hospital—but having Eren inside his personal space was intimate in a way he’d rarely felt before.

 

As his key crunches into the door, he turns to give a warning. “Do not. Let your fucking dog leave your side. I don’t need to be cleaning more dirty paw prints off my windows.”

 

“Sure. Don’t worry about Mike, he’s a good boy.” He leans down to scruff around Mike’s floppy ears. “Aren’t you?”

 

“Right.” Levi says quietly, taking Petra into his bedroom. He opens the carrier for her to exit whenever she wants and opens his drawer to grab a t-shirt that Eren will probably find suitable for himself. He’ll have to be happy with a long sleeved black V-neck, because Levi doesn’t own many bright colours. The exception is his ugly Christmas sweater.

 

“Here,” he closes the door behind him. “You can wear thi—” And the second he raises his head, he wants to bat Eren over the ears, jump in a time machine, and pray to every god that he hadn’t invited Eren and Mike into his pristine apartment.

 

Eren looks again like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t—and this time, he has. Mike’s sitting on his hind legs, butt against Levi’s white leather sofa with his tongue flipped out of his mouth and a pleased expression on his beast face. Eren’s pleading with him, hissing at him to get down, and then his cheeks blossom red the moment he sets eyes on Levi.

 

“I’m sorry!” He stutters out. “I told him to get off—he’s clean, I swear. Just… he likes new places.”

 

Levi pinches the bridge of his nose. He inhales and throws the t-shirt to Eren. “I’ll get the stain out and return it to you on Monday.”

 

“Okay.” Eren nods, weakly pointing to Mike. “Will you… look after him while I change?”

 

“I suppose so.” Levi folds his arms across his chest.

 

Eren lights up like a goddamn Christmas tree. “Thanks! You’re an angel.” And then he skids off to the hallway, and opens and closes two doors before finding the bathroom.

 

Levi lets out a breath. He slowly approaches the Godzilla-sized dog on his sofa, then perches on it beside him. “So—”

 

Mike decides he prefers other company. He hops off the sofa, revealing muddy paw-prints, and trots over to Petra’s water fountain, leaning down to sniff her cat bed on his way. He laps at it in a way that makes him appreciate Petra’s elegance. By the time he’s done, his wall, rug, and laminate flooring are twice as wet as Eren’s t-shirt.

 

Had this been anyone but Eren, he would’ve sent them home immediately—hell, he wouldn’t even have invited them back in the first place. But it _was_ Eren and Eren was—fuck. He was exhilarating. Even his messy fucking dog was exhilarating.

 

With the question of love flooding his brain and making his fingers tremble, Levi grabs a cloth and starts cleaning his sofa.

 

#


	2. July - December

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you @ everyone who commented, kudos'd and bookmarked the first part of the fic. I'm glad you enjoyed! 
> 
> Particularly special thank you to withstarlikewords.tumblr.com and chibinico.tumblr.com, two of my lovely artists from the snkminibang who made spectacular art for the fic which I'm still crying over. I'm so glad I was partnered with people as amazing as you!
> 
> I hope you enjoy this last chapter : )

It’s only four goddamn hours into July, and as usual, Levi’s woken up by Petra.

 

“Fuck.” He stumbles into the kitchen, new pinholes in his hip from where she’d started making bread on him. From her drawer full of treats, he throws her a crab flavoured twisty-stick and goes back to bed.

 

“You know the drill. No toms. No kittens. I’m too young to be a grandfather.” He tells her as he leaves that morning. She blinks at him and looks elsewhere.

 

With Eren’s newly-cleaned shirt folded neatly in his laptop bag, Levi arrives at work and scans the hustle and bustle of a Monday morning for Eren’s shaggy hair. He doesn’t find it anywhere, except under the backwards baseball cap on his head when he’s approached by him at the elevators.

 

“It’s a bad hair day.” Eren explains without Levi’s prompting, which is good, because Levi’s never been good at saying hello to Eren anyways. At that excuse, he lifts a hand to fix the blue cap, and Levi wants to call him a liar. How could someone who looked like Eren have a bad hair day? Bad hair day Levi’s ass. The ends of his hair are flicked out from underneath the hat, and through the hole that should be at the back, his fringe is visible. Levi hopes his throat doesn’t show it when he gulps.

 

“I have your shirt.” He nods, opening the flap of his bag. He passes it to Eren and takes in the way he’s dressed—tight jeans, chucks, loose t-shirt. Levi’s not one to admit when he finds something particularly striking, but fuck, Eren looks—he looks _so_ good.

 

Eren grins and lets out a satisfied sigh, brushing a piece of lint off his top. “Ahh, thank you, Levi.” He rounds his hand to his back and starts digging through his back pocket. “How much do I owe you?”

 

“Nothing.” Levi says, halting Eren’s movements.

 

“What, really? Nothing?”

 

“Did you try to pay your mother when she cleaned your clothes?”

 

“So it’s my mother, you are? Not my dad?”

 

“It’s Monday morning, Eren. Don’t fuck with me.”

 

“Whoa.” Eren chuckles, taking his hand out of his pocket. He holds his shirt in one fist, probably crumpling it. “Someone fall outta the wrong side of the bed?”

 

The elevator arrives, and as it’s empty, Eren and Levi both step inside. Levi presses his button, Eren presses his and Levi’s.

 

Levi breathes out a tiredness that can only come with being a cat owner. “Getting out of the wrong side of the bed would require getting a sleep in the first place.”

 

Eren cocks his head to the side. “Did…” He looks away, that glint disappearing from his eye like he’s remembered something he doesn’t want to. “I get it.”

 

Levi’s eyebrows furrow. “Get what?”

 

Eren’s laughter is strained. “Up all night. No sleep.” His smile is pinched at the edges and not reaching his eyes, but somehow still nice to look at. “So… who’s the lucky… person?”

 

“What?” Levi finally squints, catching onto the mere tethers of Eren’s implication. “I wasn’t up all night with someone, I was up all night because I have a cat who doesn’t understand the fucking meaning of bedtime.”

 

“O-oh!” Eren adjusts his cap, blood showing through his bronzed cheeks. “Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t—I just thought—shit. Fuck. Levi, I’m sorry.”

 

Straight-faced and a little perplexed at his flustered exterior, Levi replies, “Eren, it’s fine.”

 

“I don’t want you to think I was calling you a slut!”

 

The corner of Levi’s mouth tips up for a moment. “I don’t have time to be a slut.”

 

“Yeah, and you have to set a good impression for Petra.” Eren adds, small smile joining that blush.

 

“Floor nine.” The automated voice alerts them just before the doors open.

 

“Absolutely.” Levi plays along. “It’s fucking hard being a parent.”

 

“Tell me about it.” Eren rolls his eyes, lips clearly itching to break his smile and become a laugh instead. He lays a hand on his stomach with a thoughtful expression. “They’re so worth it though.”

 

Levi shakes his head and tries to hide the smile growing on his face. “See you later.” He says, stepping out onto his floor.

_Seeing_ Eren doesn’t come later, but hearing from him does. On Mike’s way back up from god knows where, he brings another slab of caramel shortcake and launches it at him.

 

“Eren said to give you this.”

 

“What are you doing to Eren to make him bring you treats all the time?” Petra asks, raising her head to see over the laptops.

 

Levi shrugs. Perhaps he’ll tell them one day that he and Eren are slowly becoming friends, but not now. Now, he’ll keep it as their secret.

 

#

 

“Remind me why you’re here again.” Mike leans down so closely into Eren’s personal bubble that he starts shifting away.

 

Eren halts his chair-spinning, shoulders hunching timidly. “They’re refurbishing our offices. We have to work elsewhere.”

 

Mike seems to linger for a moment, sniffing before he leans back. “Okay.”

 

From Levi’s glance to his left, he can tell that Mike’s satisfied Eren isn’t lying. They already knew he wasn’t lying—Erwin sent out a mass e-mail last week saying that any noise and disruption from above was due to maintenance on the eleventh floor.

 

Lucky for them, Eren had chosen their floor to come and work on instead of the cafeteria, which is apparently where all of his friends flocked to. Levi wonders what excuse he had to spin to them to come up here instead—and why Eren chose to in the first place. All of his friends are downstairs, why isn’t he?

 

“Is this what you guys do all day?” Finally finished spinning, Eren resituates himself on his chair and squares his shoulders, tapping on his keyboard.

 

Levi raises an eyebrow. “Do you _not_ work all day upstairs?”

 

“If you don’t, I might transfer.” Petra adds, not moving her eyes from her screen.

 

“We _work_ ,” Eren clarifies. “But it’s not this quiet. We’ve had wars and everything upstairs.”

 

“Wars?” Mike echoes.

 

“Yeah.” Eren says plainly. “Y’know, turn over the desks, launch stuff at everyone. Food fights. That’s only if Sasha’s visiting, though.”

 

Petra, Mike, and Levi all share looks. “Does Erwin know you’re doing that?” Mike asks.

 

Levi and Petra wait for an answer.

 

“Um,” Eren goes to satiate them, eyes raising to the ceiling. “Well, I can’t imagine he _doesn’t_ know since he recommended softer erasers to throw at everyone. Jean almost lost an eye and ratted us out. Erwin said he couldn’t have that on his website and to be more careful.”

 

It takes seconds for Petra to burst into a fit of giggles, and even Mike snickers into his palm. Levi bites his cheeks so his teeth don’t show when he smiles.

 

“Just for my ego, you should know it was me who made the lethal throw.”

 

That does it. Levi lets go of a small laugh before gaining his control back and Eren’s face lights up with achievement.

 

#

 

“And now you just wait for it to finish downloading.”

 

Eren’s voice is deep at the best of times, but with his lips at Levi’s ear and the vibrations rich, it’s about to put Levi six feet under. His chin is almost on Levi’s shoulder and his tone is low, their conversation private.

 

He’s a shit, and doesn’t like being interrupted, so at the beginning of the year, he’d chosen not to have automatic updates or reminders for updates on his computer. It turned out that included renewal for his security software as well. Thanks to his past self, the day started with nasty ass viruses.

 

“So,” Eren summarises, voice still throaty. His left hand is leaning on Levi’s desk, and Levi can’t stop staring at the knuckles and joints on it. Dark shadows, a scar or two, neatly cut fingernails. “The viruses are all gone, all of your browsers are updated, and your settings are updated, too. Your antivirus should stop this from happening again since you just renewed as well. K?”

 

“Okay.” Levi answers, throat tight. “Thanks.”

 

“You really need to keep the settings on though,” Eren presses. “Otherwise it’ll happen again down the line.”

 

Levi grumbles. “Fine.”

 

Before he leaves, Eren puts that left hand on Levi’s shoulder and squeezes.

 

#

 

August comes knocking and just as Levi thinks Eren’s forgotten about him— _“Eren Jaeger wants to start a conversation”_ pops up at the bottom right of his screen. There are no other Eren’s that Levi knows, but his logic tells him his bad luck in life is so prominent it’d probably spread here too.

 

Regardless, Levi opens the chat to begin the conversation.

 

**_Eren Jaeger:_ ** _Knock knock_

 

Thank god Levi has a sticker over his webcam, otherwise hackers might see his scrunched brows.

 

**_Levi Ackerman:_ ** _Who’s there?_

**_Eren Jaeger:_ ** _Little old lady_

**_Levi Ackerman:_ ** _Little old lady who?_

**_Eren Jaeger:_ ** _I didn’t know you could yodel ; )_

 

“For the love of god,” Levi groans under his breath.

 

**_Levi Ackerman:_ ** _I like you. You remind me of when I was young and stupid._

**_Eren Jaeger:_ ** _:O_

 

It happens again on the 7th.

 

**_Eren Jaeger:_ ** _Knock knock_

**_Levi Ackerman:_ ** _Who’s there?_

****

**_Eren Jaeger:_ ** _Cows go_

**_Levi Ackerman:_ ** _Cows go who?_

**_Eren Jaeger:_ ** _No, silly, cows go moo_

**_Levi Ackerman:_ ** _I’m already envisioning the duct tape across your mouth_

#

 

Somewhere in the middle of August, the heat is so bad it feels like Erwin’s company building has been wrapped in tin-foil and shoved right into a high-power microwave. Levi almost passes out in the cramped elevator, and Petra complains of dizzy-spells when she plops down onto her seat.

 

“It’s worse than we thought.” She tells them, face full of dread.

 

Levi and Mike almost snap their necks as they whip around to look at her. Mike is down four buttons on his shirt and is using his tie as a sweat-band around his forehead, and Levi’s dumped his jacket on his chair and loosened the tie around his neck. He’s sure there will still be patches under his arms at the end of the day.

 

She braces them. “The A/C is off, too.”

 

“No.” Mike whispers, eyes wide.

 

“Fuck.” Levi mutters. Just at the news he feels a bead of sweat dripping down his back.

 

Mike folds his arms on his desk and dumps his head into them. “Why did Erwin buy a building with windows you can’t open?!”

 

Levi had actually asked him that the last time this happened—it wasn’t Erwin’s request, just the way the building came. Apparently it prevented people from throwing themselves out of the windows, but Levi was sure if the heat got too bad, he’d still somehow manage to launch himself through one.

 

“Hanji’s giving out hand-held fans, if it makes you feel better.”

 

It doesn’t.

 

The day doesn’t get any cooler, Erwin sends out a mass e-mail saying he’s on the A/C issue, and Mike ends up unbuttoning his shirt the entire way.

 

“I’m sorry.” He says as he fiddles with the last button. “But I can’t take it anymore.”

 

Levi can’t blame him. He’s resorted to unbuttoning his top two buttons and has even rolled his sleeves up, but all it feels like he’s done is exposed his skin to even more heat, resulting in a warmer body temperature.

 

Levi glares at the hairs on his arms. Weren’t they supposed to do some shit to cool him down?

 

This is the one day he’s hoping Eren doesn’t drop by—the day when his skin looks oily as fuck and he’s sweating just typing his password into things. He swears if he gets up, there’ll be a sweaty ass print on his seat.

 

 Unfortunately, bad luck is always on Levi’s side.

 

“Holy fucking shit, is it hot in here or what?” Some kid walks into the room with two-toned hair and a tank top totally unsuitable for work, and Levi recognises him as the one he’d given the brownie to on the blood donation day. He’s holding a desktop in both arms and looking around.

 

“Jean, get the fuck in, this is heavy!” A deeper growl of a voice snaps behind him.

 

Fuck Levi’s life, it’s Eren with a computer tower behind him.

 

Jean does as Eren says and dumps the desktop in a spare area on the floor, Eren brightly greeting them with ‘hey guys!’ as he lowers his machine to the ground as well. “There’s nowhere else free to take this apart. Mind if we stay here?”

 

“What the fuck, I thought you’d already asked them?” Jean swirls around, eyes on Jaeger.

 

Eren huffs a weak, apologetic laugh in Levi’s direction, then furrows his eyebrows at Jean. “Well if I didn’t come up with a place, you’d have made me haul these on every floor until we found somewhere!”

 

“Christ, Jaeger, you don’t half come up with some excuses.”

 

Eren ignores his remark and puts his hands on his hips, a crooked grin showing on his face. “You guys don’t mind, do you? If you do, we’ll leave.”

 

Petra nonchalantly waves her hand as Mike says, “go ahead.”

 

Levi’ll be honest, listening to Jaeger and Jean bicker is more amusing than doing any kind of finance work on this day. He’s actually concerned he might be going delirious because of the heat, because he’s resisting snickering at their conversations. 

 

“I will shove this goddamn spanner up your ass.”

 

“That’s a screwdriver, Jean.”

 

“I will shove this goddamn screwdriver up your ass, then!”

 

“Kinky.”

 

“Fuck you.”

 

Unaware of what they’re even doing, Levi lets himself watch from the corner of his eye as Eren and Jean unscrew parts of the computer until it basically falls apart in front of them. Then, Jean takes a spray can of air to all of the dust and Eren wipes down some surfaces.

 

Twenty minutes ago, Jean had taken off his shirt, excusing himself to them. Petra did her hand-shake thing again, and Mike gestured to his own exposed stomach, saying ‘go ahead, kid’.

 

“God,” Eren wiped his bare wrist across his forehead. The sides were shiny, and judging by just how easily his skin slid across it, he was feeling the heat as well. “I’m fucking melting.” He sighs, sitting back on his heels.

 

“We have a water fountain right outside, if you want.” Petra adds, straining her neck to see over her desktop.

 

“Nah, it’s fine.” Levi’s eyes significantly widen when he peers out of the corner of them this time. Eren pulls his t-shirt over his shoulders and off his body, and Jesus fucking Christ—the kid is ripped. Levi knows he witnessed those biceps at the park, but either they’ve gotten bigger or the trees made some shadows on his skin that made Levi underestimate them. A wave of tingles march through his body and when they go to dissolve at the surface, he feels even hotter than before.

 

“Christ, put your man-boobs away.”

 

“Fuck off, Jean. Everyone has boobs.” Eren spits. “And besides, yours look worse than mine. Avoid the fucking gym, much?”

 

Jean hums a delightful little tune as he works. “This hammer is going up your goddamn ass as well, Jaeger.”

 

#

 

September comes and as Eren’s about to go, Levi asks him out for lunch. He tells himself it’s only because he doesn’t want Eren to die in a plane crash on the way to or from Germany. Eren looks like he’s about to have a seizure in front of him when he asks—the way he exhales and inhales and laughs and scratches the back of his neck with a twitching hand.

 

“Sure!”

 

That’s how he ends up sitting across from Eren at a table they’re both unfamiliar with. It’s to the back of the cafeteria to avoid the lunch line, and also conveniently out of the way of the table Hanji usually scores. The last thing he needs is for Hanji to saunter up, spill all of his embarrassing moments, and have Eren know just how unlucky in love he’s really been all along.

 

“So when do you fly out?” He asks to make conversation. It turns out Levi is better at it than he thinks—all he has to do is ask a question and Eren can ramble for ages. Really—he’s aged five years just sitting with him. If it’s not because his knees are starting to creek, it’s because Eren reminds him of his age.

 

“The twenty-seventh.” Eren looks to the ceiling as if to remember, then nods. “I come back on the fourth of October. Did I tell you it was Germany I was going to?”

 

Levi nods.

 

“Yeah,” Eren confirms, holding a sandwich in one hand. “I’m going to visit my mom. Well, not really my mom, because she doesn’t live there. But I’m going to visit there. With my mom.”

 

“Why Germany?” Levi asks, and takes a bite of his own sandwich.

 

“I was born there!” Eren’s eyes light up, then he chuckles and shrugs a shoulder, ducking his head. “Well, I was born there—but I mean, I didn’t grow up there. My mom did, though. She grew up in a place called Dortmund and then she moved to Berlin and had me. Then we moved here. But we still go back all the time, to visit her parents. So, yeah.”

 

Levi nods. “Can you speak any German?”

 

“Ja, ich bin fließend in Deutsch.” Eren says, accent shaky.

 

A corner of Levi’s mouth tips up. “So—”

 

“Ben Türkçe olarak da akıcı.”

 

Levi pauses. “…What language is that?”

 

“Turkish.” Eren grins. “I don’t know it as well as German—I don’t even know if I said that right—but my dad’s from Turkey, so.”

 

“Bet you passed languages in school with flying colours, then.”

 

Eren snorts. “Nah. Well, German, I did. But Spanish was the only other option available and I hated the teacher so, I just dropped that. It came up as a technical fail.”

 

“Why’d you hate the teacher?” Levi asks.

 

Eren licks his lips, moves his sandwich bite to the side of his mouth, and keeps on chatting. “I dunno. She just asked way too much of me. And she didn’t seem to like me ‘cause I always called her out on her bullshit. She wanted us to spend two hours a night on her work but we had every other teacher asking for an hour on theirs, too. And sorry,” he scoffs, “but honestly, I only took the class because there was nothing else available, so it wasn’t the most important.”

 

“Hm,” Levi hums.

 

“Anyway, it was either that or I got her to kick me out. But that didn’t work—I already tried that. She was my German teacher, too, y’see, so… she kind of knew all my tricks.”

 

“All of your tricks?”

 

“Yeah,” Eren grimaces. “I was okay academically, but surpassed in all things trouble.”

 

“Jesus,” Levi snorts. “What did you do?”

 

“The usual,” he shrugs. “Locked the door on her when she went outside for something. Asked her about her kids so she’d go off on a tangent. I think she actually respected the lengths I went to.”

 

Levi shakes his head, tone amused. “Whatever happened to sitting on your ass and learning?”

 

“Well,” Eren frowns, chewing. “Whatever happened to homework being equally split and the curriculum being something teenagers could actually handle without wanting to hurt themselves and the teachers being paid enough to enjoy spending more time with students who need help? I’ll sit on my ass and learn when the government fixes all the shit that’s wrong with the education system.”

 

Levi blinks, almost eternally silenced. “Not bad.” He murmurs. “No offense, but you look like an idiot.”

 

Eren’s jaw slackens.

 

“I mean.” Levi quickly corrects. “You look like someone who wouldn’t pay attention to—issues like that.”

 

“Fuck you, I watch the news every morning even though it depresses the shit out of me.”

 

Oh, Eren. A man after Levi’s own heart.

 

“It does.” Levi agrees.

 

“Seems like all they report is bad stuff.” Eren rests his elbow on the table. “I wish they’d report more good stuff, like dogs learning tricks and saving people and cats being the assholes they are.”

 

“Yeah, well, serial killers steal the spotlight, I’m afraid.”

 

“Yeah, well, fuck them.” Eren spits, huffing. “I don’t even know how—I mean. Unless it was your life or theirs—as in self-defence—how could anyone just—? I don’t even know.”

 

“Tell me about it.” Levi keeps his eyes trained on Eren, examining his reaction. “I get more riled up when it has to do with children, though.”

 

“Fuck!” Eren grits his teeth together, his voice quiet but angry. “Me too. I fucking hate it. Sorry,” he shakes his head, silently seething. Instead of biting his sandwich, he rips it into pieces and throws it in his mouth. “Someone I know almost—their parents got murdered when they were a kid.”

 

“Shit.” Levi mumbles. “That’d be…” He lets it trail off, lets Eren grab the end of it.

 

“Yeah.” He agrees with a nod. “World’s a fucking mess.”

 

“Think of your visit to Germany.” Levi tries to steer the conversation. “Will you visit all of the tourist areas?”

 

“Nah,” Eren, seemingly calm, shakes his head. “I’ve done all that a million times. Can’t wait for the food, though. Can’t wait for butterbrezel. And currywurst. Jeez. I’m going to come back, like, a stone heavier. Might even take down the plane.”

 

“I’m sure you’ll be fine.” Levi offers, small smile on his face. “Have you ever visited France?”

 

“…I’ve gone to Disneyland Paris? But that’s it. How come? Is that where you’re from?”

 

“Not from.” Levi shakes his head. “Somewhat similar to you, except I wasn’t born there. My mother is French. I’m technically American.”

 

“Sweet. Does your mom live there?”

 

“Not anymore. She moved around nineteen-eighty.”

 

Eren’s lips crack into a sad smile. “Seems like tons of people move here for a better life.” The murder story should’ve been a tell-tale sign that Eren was an over-sharer, but Levi only noticed it now. “My mom was a teenage mother and even though her parents stuck by her, she still felt like she’d only make it if she moved. Pretty brave, I mean. To move with a baby when you’re still a kid yourself. It’s weird.”

 

“Hm.” Levi hummed in agreement. What an interesting fact—that Eren’s mother had produced him so young. Nothing Levi judged—she’d obviously done a fantastic job—but still, it was funny how everyone had a story, and it was funny how Eren’s seemed to suit him the more Levi found out about it.

 

He wasn’t prepared to tell his own yet, though. “A lot of mother’s have a different kind of strength.” He settled. It was the most he could say without dampening the entire conversation, revealing how he was born.

 

“Yeah,” Eren grinned. “They do.”

 

#

 

“Otherwise, there’ll be kids at your door begging for sweets.”

 

In Erwin’s office, Hanji stands at the window, hovering between pointing out types of birds and raising her hands in the air in frustration at Levi.

 

“I doubt children small enough to trick-or-treat are capable of breaking down my apartment’s front door.” Levi slid a glare towards Hanji, arms folded. “I’m not attending.”

 

“Levi! You can’t be the only one not to come. I’ve ordered things! With the assumption that you’ll be there!”

 

“Well, whose fault is that?” Levi asks, noticing the way Erwin’s eyes flick back and forth between him and Hanji. He sits at his desk, with his fancy laptop that probably never fails on him.

 

“Yours. For not coming.”

 

“Fuck off.”

 

“Levi,” Hanji stretches out his name, almost shattering the glass around them. No wonder her music teacher hadn’t suggested singing in high school. “I let you off one year and it was because you were sick. No more excuses.”

 

“I’m going to have a headache.”

 

“How do you know you’ll have a headache on Halloween?!”

 

“I mean right now!” He snaps.

 

“Levi!”

 

“You can’t make an appearance just so Hanji didn’t waste money?”

 

Levi feels his eyebrows arch. The action makes him think of Erwin’s classic nickname. “You’re taking her side, eyebrows?”

 

Erwin’s lips turn up at the corners. “I’m taking nobody’s side. You’re welcome to a party. If you don’t go, you’ll end up a hermit.”

 

“I don’t mind being a hermit.”

 

“You’ll mind when I don’t invite you to my parties anymore. Levi, come on! You know I host the best parties. There’s even gonna be alcohol.”

 

“Hanji, someone caught something from your refrigerator last time.” Levi points out.

 

Hanji hold up a hesitant finger. “Okay. Okay, I know that happened. But listen, that wasn’t my fault. They weren’t supposed to go into my lab refrigerator. It’s in the basement for a reason.”

 

“She’s even invested in a lock and put up a sign.” Erwin adds.

 

“Like drunk people are going to read a sign.”

 

“Levi. Party. Alcohol. All you can eat. Seats everywhere. I’ll even settle for you reading a book in an armchair! You can bring Eren!”

 

“I—”

 

Erwin looks up from some papers on his desk, face scarily serious. “You’re not bringing your cat again.”

 

#

 

Levi couldn’t be more glad to see Eren return to work. Just his presence in the elevator had become something Levi missed, as well as company that didn’t belong to Hanji or Erwin. They were still trying to get him to attend Hanji’s Halloween party—still. They’d resorted to sly techniques, too, like leaving post-it notes on his desktop or e-mailing him links of skimpy Halloween costumes. Hanji had even photo-shopped a couple with his face on them. He did not make a good sexy nurse. And he’d never be able to enter the medical field now, with that image plastered to his brain.

 

But then Eren comes back, and even though Levi’s still fruitlessly trying to deny the effect he has on him, he’s completely sucked in. Eren being in the same place just makes things better in a way he can’t explain. It calms him, makes him feel like even if everything went tits up, things would be okay.

 

It’s why Levi breaks into a genuine, closed-lipped smile when he first sees Eren in the cafeteria. Eren locks eyes with him at the same time, his face brightening. He makes his way away from his friends and comes up to his table where he’s waiting for Hanji. Levi wonders what they look like—it’s weird. He doesn’t see Eren do this to anyone else, and nobody else certainly visits him. Does it make them look like friends?

 

“Hey!”

 

“How was Germany?”

 

Eren brushes his hand through his slightly-longer hair and it flops into several directions, mostly over his forehead. His other hand stays tucked into the front pocket of his jeans. His thumb sticks out like a photographer has placed it there. “It was great! How’s this place been since I was gone?”

 

“Horrific. Hanji’s throwing a Halloween party.” Levi answers, mostly testing out how Eren would react to a party. Go? Stay? Repulsed? Love parties?

 

“No way! That’s my favourite holiday. What are you gonna go as?” Eren shows his teeth in a smile. Must love parties, then.

 

“Nothing, I’m not going to go.” Levi shrugs a shoulder, and Eren’s smile drops.

 

“Wait, you aren’t? Why not? Are you gone that day, or something?”

 

Levi doesn’t have it in him to explain that he’s available, but just won’t show up because of his own hermit preferences.

 

“I’m too old for Halloween parties.”

 

“What?” Eren laughs. “Come on, Halloween gets better when you get older. I bet it’d be a laugh. She invited me through the IM system and said to dress up because there’s going to be a competition. What should I go as?”

 

Eren’s voice fades in Levi’s mind as he tries to think back to the opening time of Hanji’s party. Could he make it there after work if he drove fast enough…?

 

#

 

Eren goes as a zombie, but Levi only notices this near the end of the night when he actually bumps into Eren. Despite (mostly) only going in the hopes of seeing him, Levi’s night isn’t as shitty as he thought it’d be. Drunk Hanji is possibly the best Hanji, Petra spills almost every joke she’s ever heard, and Mike does the Macarena with Erwin on his shoulders. And that’s only in the kitchen, where they spent most of their night. Hanji’s living room is something Levi isn’t sure he wants to venture into. 

 

He does, however, walk towards the hallway whilst half of them have a smoke outside in the back garden. That’s where he sees Eren, sitting in an armchair in the living room with a beer bottle in one hand and a half-bitten apple in the other. When he catches Levi, he gets up (sloppily) and approaches him. His facial make-up is elaborate and either done by a professional, or someone aspiring to be one. There’s a gunshot to his forehead that drips fake blood down the right side of his face, and a large gash on his left cheek that’s so frayed, it looks real. There’s exaggerated bruises under his eyes and around his neck.

 

In the apocalypse, he’d look fucking awful, and Levi wouldn’t hesitate to snap his spine in half and spit on his corpse, but it’s only a Halloween party and he looks—somehow—fucking amazing. There’s fake blood jelly in his hair and his tiny amount of freckles are obscured by make-up but he looks like everything Levi has ever found attractive in his life.

 

“What are you as?” He tilts his head, an action that should only belong to adorable puppies, when he meets Levi at the bottom of the stairs.

 

Levi drawls. “A serial killer. They look like everyone else.”

 

Eren’s eyes widen, one of his light-coloured contacts shifting in his eye. “That’s so clever!” He changes his expression and chuckles. “Does this mean you have a knife on you or something, though?”

 

Levi turns his top lip up. “A knife would be too bloody and messy.”

 

The smile on Eren’s face twitches, or maybe Levi’s eyesight does because of that damn contact. “Yeah. What’s cleaner?”

 

Levi shrugs. In actual fact, this is his time to shine. He’s watched so many crime documentaries he probably could tell you the cleanest way to kill, but he won’t—not in front of Eren. All he needs is to freak him out and have the cops called on him. “Strangulation? I don’t know.”

 

“Hey, or drowning.” Eren suggests, clearly thinking about his own question now. Then his eyes slide from the ceiling over to Levi’s face. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this in public. Give people the wrong idea.”

 

Levi snorts, shoulders jerking a little. “I doubt anyone can even hear us.”

 

“So I can shout out your system password then?”

 

Levi’s eyes narrow. What a little shit. “Old password. I changed it after you recommended it.”

 

Eren winks at him again, just like he did the last time they talked about his password. “Good.”

 

Even though Levi is too far gone to care what Eren does—it’s not like it’ll deter him in any way, anyways, he’s already tried—he’s still surprised when Eren doesn’t end up wasted by the end of the night, beginning of the morning. All of his friends—especially Jean, god help that boy’s mother or roommate or whatever—drank so much the rooms were full of laughter or someone throwing up or someone scoffing their face or someone crying—ah to be young again.

 

By the time the party’s winding down and people have left, Eren stays to help clean up orange and black cups, thanks Hanji for having him, and even calls taxis for some people he thinks won’t manage getting home. Levi’s heart thumps. It ends up throbbing when Eren offers the last of his money to a girl so she can get home safe. He doesn’t even know her. He’s sure he’s deceased when he even offers to go with her and walk from her house to his house to make sure she’s absolutely secure.

 

He’s just hung up with someone’s mother (Levi only heard part of the conversation, but seemed to reassure the woman that he’d made sure the guy had taken his medication), when he breathes a sigh and sends a tired smile to Levi. “You’re still here? I thought you’d be gone.”

 

“I usually stay to help Hanji get to bed.” It sounds better than that he stays to break up any fights. They can always count on him to hold back a guy twice his size.

 

Eren’s eyes move to the right. “I think…” he points to her lifeless figure, slumped over her own sofa armrest. One of her legs is in the bucket of apples. The loudest sound in the room is her snore. “That’s taken care of.”

 

“Christ.” Levi breathes. He sits his Pepsi down on her coffee table and uses her knee to navigate her leg out of the water. He considers rolling up the leg of her jeans, but they’re stuck to her skin like dried glue, so he forgets it and drapes a blanket over her instead. He removes the apples from the bucket and puts them in the fruit bowl, but leaves the bucket there for her—no doubt she’ll need it in the morning.

 

He can hear Eren’s voice behind him. “Any chance you’re going by my place? I gave away the last of my—”

 

Levi stops him there. “I’m not about to let you go home alone, anyway. And I know. I saw.”

 

Eren’s smile is tired and weak all over and all Levi wants to do fall asleep being close to him. Smelling his clothes, smelling his skin, smelling his hair. “I have a sister. My mom raised me to take care of girls.”

 

“Even if that meant abandoning yourself?”

 

“…Maybe not abandoning myself. I just don’t think sometimes. All I thought about was hearing about a dead body in the morning. I couldn’t live if I hadn’t given her it.” 

 

Levi nods, understanding. He finally accepts it: Eren Jaeger has a goddamn heart of gold and he’s in so fucking deep, he’s never recovering from this crush.

 

“Did you bring anything? Jacket?”

 

“Nope.” Eren smiles, and his eyes look hazy and tipsy instead of tired. He holds his arms out, displaying his torso. “Just myself.”

 

“Right.” Levi nods. He leaves a glass of water out for Hanji, then crosses her car park with Eren to his car.

 

“What time even is it?” Eren breathes from the passenger seat when Levi gets in and starts the car. His breath shows as mist when he yawns. The bushes in front of the car are visible when Levi turns his lights on. “I’m so fuckin’ tired.”

 

“One-thirty-five.” Levi reads from the answer his car provides when it shows up. He pulls out of the apartment parking and takes one of the main roads, resisting a yawn himself. He’s so sure he’ll collapse on his bed that he might not even wake for Petra’s cuddles.

 

“Fuck.” Eren sniffs and keeps pressing the home button on his phone. “My phone’s out of battery, I bet Mikasa’s blowing it up.”

 

“Is that your sister?” Levi asks. He’d meant to ask Eren about his sister. He throws Eren his phone from the driver’s side without looking. “If you know her number, you can text her.”

 

Eren rubs the eye he has the contact in and huffs. Even his breath is exhausted. “Thanks. I don’t want her to worry. She probs will anyways, though.”

 

“You can call her if you want.” Levi decides, risking a glance at him. The roads are mostly empty, but some aren’t well lit, and he’ll live in a dirty house for a month before driving unsafely with a drunk kid in his car.

 

Whilst Eren is on the phone to his sister, Levi focuses on the roads and trying to avoid potholes. The atmosphere is calm and tired and something else that makes Levi feel comfortable. In a car with Eren after a party, with his sleeves rolled up and his entire being feeling informal. There’s something about it that makes him so comfortable he could fall asleep right there at the wheel. It’s something he could get used to.

 

He only hears Eren’s side of the call, but hears Mikasa’s voice briefly on the other end.

 

“It’s fine. He’s a colleague. He’s best friends with Erwin. Erwin—the boss, remember? I’ll be at my apartment in a couple of minutes. I’ll text you when I charge my phone. Promise. It was good, Jean ended up shitfaced. Yes,” he sighs exasperatedly. “I remembered to thank her. Okay? Okay. Night. Night, I’ll see you tomorrow. Love you too, night.”

 

“I was right,” Eren puts the phone in front of the gearshift. “She worried. She’s okay now, though. I’ll just text my mom in the morning as well. Oh!” As if he realises he’s rambling, Eren turns to Levi with tilted eyebrows and a sorry expression. “Thanks for doing this, by the way. Driving me home. I know you probably want bed, too.”

 

“It’s fine.” Levi answers. “We have the same conscience.” He admits. “I don’t want to hear about your sorry ass on the news if you don’t get home safe.”

 

Eren lays a hand on where his heart might be under his skin, sloppy smile on his face. “My hero.”

 

Levi doesn’t say anything—only focuses on the road. Maybe he’s getting Eren home safe, but Levi thinks he’s the real hero tonight. Giving over the last of his money, making sure someone took their medicine, calling cabs for everyone, helping Hanji clean up, even thanking her for inviting him. He thinks back to the days he imagined Eren was a complete asshole, and fuck, he’d never been so wrong.

 

“Which one is yours again?” He asks as he pulls into a street. He knows by conversation that Eren’s place is near, but has never physically seen his block before.

 

“Eh,” Eren draws out the word, using his finger to point out buildings as if it’ll help him focus more. He stops at one with a couple of bikes outside. “This one! Oh, look, you can see Mike at the window! And there’s Armin!” He laughs and waves at them.

 

Levi gives a polite wave and then turns off the engine while Eren fiddles with his seatbelt. “Thanks for driving me. I probs would’ve had to get Armin outta bed if you weren’t here. Text me when you get home okay? I put my number in your phone. Hope you don’t mind.” And then he skips out and up to his building, with a flash of his canines in a grin and another wave.

 

From his car, Levi watches him hop up his stairs and knows he’s in safe when Mike clambers away from the window, apparently excited about something.

 

#

 

**17 November 2016 From:** Eren Jaeger

_Hey I have a surprise for you_

 

**17 November 2016 To:** Eren Jaeger

_Shouldn’t you be working?_

 

Levi’s only finished one sentence of his report before his phone vibrates again.

 

**17 November 2016 From:** Eren Jaeger

_Mom, please, I can work and have surprises at the same time_

 

Levi’s eyes circle his sockets.

 

**17 November 2016 To:** Eren Jaeger

_Stop calling me your mom. What’s the surprise?_

 

**17 November 2016 From:** Eren Jaeger

_If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise_

 

The surprise ends up being a microfiber cloth to clean his desktop with. He comes back to it on his desk after lunch, blue and soft with a post-it on it.

 

_Because I know you like to keep things clean! – Eren_

 

#

 

“Levi! You’re still here?”

 

Eren pokes his head around the glass doors, his body practically horizontal.

 

Levi leans his chin on his fist, and his elbow on the desk as he studies some figures. “Yes.”

 

Dropping his other foot to the floor, Eren approaches him and peers at his screen. “Why?”

 

“I’m not getting caught in the parking lot while everyone rushes to get home.” Since the weatherwoman on the news this morning had said a literal shitstorm of rain and thunder and lightning was coming, Erwin had given everyone a long weekend off. Mike didn’t even save his work, just grabbed his laptop bag and ran. Petra was close after him. Hanji had ruffled his hair on her way out.

 

The last time this happened, one of those assholes scratched his car, and since they all covered each other’s backs, he was yet to find out who it had been.

 

In the reflection of the monitor, he can see Eren tilt his head. “So, you’re leaving in like, five minutes?”

 

“No, I’ll stay here and finish my work.” If he even gets to finish his work, that is. At least his car will be safe.

 

He doesn’t realise Eren’s even gone until he turns around to ask ‘when are you going home?’ with some affectionate name-calling thrown in there too, because he has to hint to his crush _some_ way, but Eren’s gone. Levi is a little insulted, and then starts wondering if he should book a hearing appointment. Did Eren say goodbye? His usually loud, young steps can be heard from a mile off. If he’d excitedly ran home like the rest, Levi would’ve heard. Literally.

 

He inwardly shrugs and goes back to his work, trying to stitch up the tear in his heart that he’ll forever deny is there. He probably got an important call and left to give Levi privacy, or maybe he heard a friend shout on him. Or maybe he really did say goodbye and Levi was just getting way older than he wished.

 

“Sorry!” His voice echoes throughout the room once more, young and sweet and boyish. He’s holding two mugs carefully, steam rising from both of them. He sits one on Levi’s desk and the other on Mike’s, and steals Mike’s chair. “I’m guessing that’s your mug? It says ‘cunt’ on it.”

 

Levi’s lips threaten to quirk up. Hanji is a pest, but fuck if her gifts aren’t accurate. “That’s mine. What are you doing?”

 

Eren sighs as he settles into Mike’s swingy-chair. “I’m keeping you company. Wait, shit, I forgot to text Jean.” He pulls out his phone, taps against the screen, and then puts his phone back in his pocket with satisfaction once it makes a whooshing noise. “He was gonna drive me back to my place. I told him not to wait up.”

 

A soft frown takes over Levi’s eyebrows. “You don’t have to. It’s freezing, you should go home.”

 

“And leave you here?” Eren asks, hands wrapped around his mug.

 

“Yes? I’ve been alone here before.”

 

“Probably before I was in your life, though, right?”

 

He was right about that—last time he’d been alone was approximately same time last year when the exact same thing had happened. Everyone scuttled off, but he’d stayed to finish his work.

 

Back then, he’d been a workaholic. He still was, you could debate. But he didn’t want to be. And the difference between wanting something and having something was action.

 

On a whim, Levi saves his work and shuts down his system, grabbing his coat. “Come on.” He tells Eren.

 

“What? Where are we going?” He asks, resituating his mug on the desk.

 

“Erwin told us to go home. We’re not staying here. Have you eaten?”

 

Jaw slack, Eren shakes his head, face breaking into a grin. “What made you change your mind?”

 

Levi wants to say ‘you’, but doesn’t know if he should be stroking Eren’s ego just yet.

 

“Simple thought process.” He decides. “What do you want to eat?”

 

“Ugh,” Eren virtually drools in front of him, following him out of the office. “I’d kill for a McDonalds right now.”

 

That’s how Levi ends up at the drive-thru, waiting for the person on the speaker to say something while Eren scans the menu and almost drips saliva all over his car whilst doing so.

 

Levi looks through the burgers, nose turning up at almost all of them. He knew fast food was unhealthy, that wasn’t what bothered him—it was the names. How the fuck was he, a mature adult, supposed to ask for a ‘big tasty’? Around his group of friends, that would be entirely taken out of context and they’d redirect him to the nearest gay bar.

 

“I think I’ll get a big mac.” He decides. “Looks like it has at least something nutritious in it.”

 

Eren stretches over to look out his window. “Well, yeah. You have all the food groups. Carbohydrates, protein, vegetables, cheese.”

 

“Cheese isn’t a food group.” Levi frowns.

 

Eren glances at him. “It should be.”

 

He orders the big mac, as planned, and Eren orders chicken nuggets. He asks for twenty, and Levi doubts he’ll actually get twenty individual chicken nuggets, but when Eren opens a box and there it fucking is—twenty entire individual chicken nuggets—Levi decides maybe he shouldn’t underestimate him anymore. He can speak three fluent languages, possibly more, is a master at comebacks, makes pretty good coffee, and is given twenty nuggets when he asks for twenty. Kid’s a prodigy.

 

They eat in a car park, Eren rubbing his nose against the sleeve of his jumper as he eats. It turns red.

 

“Are you going to manage all of those?” Levi asks, stomach turning when concern reaches his voice.

 

Eren spares him a glance and snorts. “Son.”

 

“I’m older than you.” Levi frowns.

 

“Prepare to be amazed at what this body can handle. I once ate sixty of these without even blinking.”

 

Levi blinks at that.

 

“Well,” Eren chews on a nugget and shrugs, next one ready between his thumb and forefinger. “Jean dared me. Still managed to do it, though.”

 

Softly snorting, Levi shakes his head and takes a bite of his burger. It’s delicious, he’ll give them that. He just wishes he didn’t have to eat it with his hands, and that the lettuce pieces were smaller so he didn’t have to end up slurping them into his mouth when they hung out after a bite.

 

“So what are you doing after this? Just gonna go home, sit with Petra?”

 

Levi nods, looking down at his hands. He wishes he could say he was doing something interesting—writing a novel, writing a song, knitting, joining up with some friends, seeing a movie—but the truth was, his life was just that boring. He’d go home. He’d work. He’d sit with Petra. He’d shower and go to bed.

 

That’s why Eren was so exhilarating.

 

“I’d go for a walk, but forecast looks shit.”

 

“Yeah,” Eren says, tone agreeing. “No idea how I’m gonna get Mike out for a walk. He fuckin’ hates the rain. Hates thunder even more, he’s gonna be whining all night.”

 

He’s still not particularly fond of the huge beast, but he does say _bless him_ internally. No animal deserves to feel scared. It was similar weather when he’d found Petra, huddling and incessantly meowing for someone to help her—in fact, after all of the kitten books he’s read, it breaks his heart even more to realise she was probably calling for her mother. Levi had looked, but he’d never found. The thought drove him crazy with anger and emotions—if he ever found the bastard who abandoned her, the last thing they’d see were his blazing eyes, and the last thing they’d feel would be his hands around their throat.

 

He tells himself it doesn’t matter—she has a good home now. He loves her, so very much. It still doesn’t kill him every day to wonder if she had siblings he could’ve saved as well, though. He’d have taken them all in. One, two, five, nine. He hates admitting it—fucking despises it—but one thing he has a soft spot for: animals.

 

“Petra doesn’t necessarily like it either. She likes watching the rain, doesn’t like the noise.” He adds.

 

“Mm.” Eren takes a sip of his drink. “It’s nice to look at. Shit to be in.”

 

“Yeah.” Levi snorts. “I wouldn’t put her back out in the rain.” He takes another bite of his food.

 

“Aw,” Eren’s eyebrows seem to droop. “Don’t tell me she was a stray?”

 

Levi nods, chewing. “She was just a kitten.”

 

Those eyes harden. “And someone left her outside? Fucking dick. I’d have—I don’t know. I’d have done something.” He picks at some thread on his jeans.

 

“Get in line.” Levi sighs. He doesn’t quite know if the weather or Eren himself prompts him to spill, but he does. “I tried finding her family, walked for ages. I couldn’t. I don’t know if they were all kicked out and she got lost and the others were somewhere else—it might’ve even been an accident, but. You know how people are these days.”

 

“Tell me about it.” Eren shakes his head. “I got Mike from a shelter and I don’t even wanna think about why he was put there. What he might’ve gone through before he had me.”

 

“It’s a shitty life.” Levi concludes.

 

Something twitches at Eren’s cheek. “There are ways to make it better.” And then he makes eye contact with Levi, and he’s fucking six foot under. “I bet Petra loves you for saving her; knows what you did. She’s lucky to have you.”

 

Levi swallows, his throat clogging up. He isn’t about to cry, he just—isn’t complimented very often, and from someone like Eren Jaeger, who can’t lie for shit, it’s—it’s nice. “Well, I try.” He admits.

 

“It’s obvious.” The way Eren looks at him, smile knowing and sly, it feels like he might be able to see right through him. See all his flaws, see all his passions. “She’s one spoiled kitty.”

 

Shrugging his shoulder, Levi finishes off his burger. “She deserves it.”

 

“So do you, y’know.”

 

“Hm?” Levi looks at the window, turns back to Eren. He’s picking at a nugget, halving it and then putting it back in the box and picking up another to do the same.

 

“You deserve to be spoiled by someone. We all do.” He adds quickly, cheeks reddening.

 

“That includes you.” Levi responds, and god, he wants to be the one to spoil Eren. He rarely thinks he’s good enough—he fucking isn’t good enough for Eren Jaeger—but he could love Eren with everything he has and everything he doesn’t have. He’d bend over backwards for him, move a goddamn planet, bring him home pieces of the moon. He’d treat him like he did Petra: make sure he never wanted anything, because he had it all.

 

“Yeah, but… I dunno. You seem like you just… deserve it. More. Than a lot of other people I know.”

 

It’s weird to see Eren look so bare and honest. He always is—but not so delicately.

 

“Don’t take it the wrong way.” Eren squints. “You just seem kinda lonely.”

 

Well, fuck.

 

He is and he isn’t—sometimes he feels he’s destined to be alone, other times he thinks he could be worthy of fantastic friendships and a mediocre relationship. He isn’t really sure.

 

“I wasn’t always.” He confesses, and it feels like confession after confession come tumbling out after. “I had a boyfriend, once. It didn’t work out.”

 

“How come?” Eren asks. His frown is back.

 

“It cost me my relationship with a lot of my family. Not that I give a fuck; if they want to be homophobic shits, then let them. But it caused a pretty big argument that made him walk. Not his fault, not my fault.” He shrugs.

 

Eren blinks, drawing back. “He should’ve stuck by you. I would’ve. I—I mean. That’s what you do, right? When you love someone. You. Stay with them.”

 

“In an ideal situation, I suppose. Not if the person isn’t treating you like they should.”

 

“Like abusers?” Eren whispers like they’re in a busy area. They aren’t. It’s deserted.

 

Raindrops start falling on the window. “Like abusers.” Levi nods. “Like assholes.”

 

“Shit,” Eren murmurs, looking down at his lap again. “So, after this boyfriend, you became lonely? That seems… like you put too much value in a person, or something.”

 

“I was young; you’re allowed to do that shit when you’re young. Feel disappointment, and all that trash.” Levi tugs the sleeves of his shirt down a little, feeling exposed and gradually uncomfortable with the conversation.

 

Eren moves his mouth around like he’s thinking, then talks quieter than usual. “Y’know when I told you my friend’s parents were murdered?”

 

“Yes?” Both intrigued and confused, Levi’s eyebrows furrow.

 

“Well,” Eren sighs. “That was my sister’s parents. My sister is adopted. My parents took her in after it… happened.”

 

“Oh.” Levi mutters almost silently. He looks at his own lap.

 

“I stabbed the guy.”

 

His posture freezes. “What?”

 

Eren starts eating his chicken nuggets again. “It happened when I was playing at her house. So I stabbed the guy.”

 

“The intruder?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Thank fuck. I thought you meant her parents.”

 

“Nah.” Eren snickered sourly. “Just the guy who tried to kill Mikasa too. The other one fled when they saw that. Ten-year-old kid stabbing someone twice his size.”

 

Levi thinks of when he said stabbing someone would be too messy and the way Eren’s expression had changed. “Was it fatal?”

 

“No, he lived. I was so surprised I just let go of the knife, left the blade in him. I think a paramedic said that slowed the bleeding, or something.”

 

“Shit.” Levi relaxes his eyes, realising they’d become widened.

 

“You’re not gonna, like, not be my friend now are you?” Eren laughs feebly. “I thought—I mean you told me that story about your family. I thought I had to tell you something too.”

 

“You didn’t.” Levi frowns. “Just because I share, doesn’t mean you have to. Never share just because you feel obligated. But no,” he finally answers, “I’m not going to stop being friends with you because you defended yourself and your sister when you were a child.”

 

“Right,” Eren breathes out relief. “Good. Thanks. I don’t—talk about it much. I know it hurts Mikasa, and my mom gets upset thinking about what could’ve happened, so.”

 

“Well,” Levi gestures to the air inside his car. “You’re welcome to talk about it here. I’m impartial.”

 

“Thanks,” Eren quirks one end of his lips up, though his smile is still sad. “I can’t tell just anyone, either, because they might run and tell the cops. Y’know, it was just instinct that I did it, but now—like, as an adult, I’m kinda glad. And that feels weird to say—that I’m glad I hurt someone.”

 

“He murdered your sister’s parents—perhaps he deserved it.” Levi offers.

 

“He fucking does.” Eren momentarily looks out of his window. “He deserved—worse. But at the same time, I went through a phase when I was a teenager. I thought I was some sort of monster. Like, isn’t self-defence usually when you defend, not attack? Because that’s what I did. I just attacked him.”

 

“Like you said, it was instinct. Instinct doesn’t care about defence or offense.” Levi informs. “It only cares about keeping you alive.”

 

“That’s what everyone says.” Eren nods. “It’s still weird though.”

 

“I’m sure you’re allowed to feel weird about it. It’s not something every child has to stand up to.”

 

“Yeah, I just try to tell myself that if I didn’t, he might’ve hurt Mikasa.” He puffs out a laugh. “I know I talk shit about her worrying, but the truth is we’re just as protective over each other.”

 

“Must be some bond.”

 

“Yeah. You got any siblings?”

 

“No,” Levi replies. “It’s just me, Petra, and my mom.”

 

“Nice.” Eren says, nodding.

 

It is nice, Levi thinks.

 

When he goes home that night, he doesn’t do his work. He lies, face-up, on his bed with Petra on his stomach. She must wonder what’s wrong with him to be getting extra cuddles and attention in the middle of the day. The truth is, he’s thinking of everything Eren told him earlier.

 

Levi’s never been a particularly good listener. He can listen to instructions and then complete a task accurately, but he’s never been seen as a shoulder to cry on, or someone good at giving advice. He’s more of a tough-love person. When Petra had dated that one guy who loved to put her in a headlock and then laughed when she got upset about her hair being messed up, Levi’s immediate response had been ‘dump him’ and then an offer to kick his ass. He’d once accidentally told a colleague who was a parent to clap and shout ‘no!’ when their baby did something bad. It’s not his fault he thinks of Petra as his baby.

 

Still, Eren is different from all of those situations. He hadn’t wanted advice, he probably would’ve been fine with no response, and didn’t want a solution to his problem. He’d just wanted to get it out, and he’d chosen Levi to spill it to. That meant trust, right? It had to. It never even crossed Levi’s mind that Eren might go and spill Levi’s secret to his friends and then laugh about it. Levi was still asking himself: who is Eren Jaeger? But he knew Eren Jaeger was not a boy who’d do that.

 

Petra meows at him a couple of times, and he gets the hint. He rolls out of bed, follows her to the kitchen, and lays out her food for her. Whilst she’s eating, he leans against his countertop and eats a yoghurt.

 

Eren Jaeger is strange and loveable.

 

Levi’s hooked.

 

**9 December 2016 To:** Eren Jaeger

_If you’re free tomorrow and the weather is better, would you like to meet up?_

 

#

 

On the seventeenth of December, Hanji throws a Christmas party for the staff and this time, Levi doesn’t hesitate to attend. He grumbles, pretends to say no a couple of times, and then feebly “gives in” when she promises him it isn’t a secret birthday party.

 

Before he leaves, he makes sure Petra is well-fed and played with, and even leaves some of her balls rolling around the floor in case she needs to occupy herself. Hopefully she’s so tuckered out that she sleeps the entire time he’s gone and doesn’t even notice he’s left. Fat chance. At the mirror beside his front door, Levi scowls at his reflection one last time and tries to fix a wrinkle in his navy shirt. Looking at himself sometimes makes him think he was an idiot for getting his hopes up about Eren.

 

They’ve hung out a couple of times without work being involved at all, which makes Levi think perhaps their friendship has upped a notch. Eren’s been over twice, and Petra’s gotten so used to the scent of him that she pads right up to him when he arrives at the door. Levi’s been at Eren’s once, and ended up begging to clean his bathroom. He’s still one hundred per cent sure there was something growing in his toothbrush cup.

 

Still, it’s been pleasant. Everything Levi’s learnt about Eren—even his inadequately cleaned bathroom that still gnaws at his brain—fascinated him. He hates using overused and cliché phrases, but Eren is truly a breath of fresh air.

 

He’s a gorgeous big gust of fresh air though, and Levi is like. A breeze at best.

 

As he gets in the car, he sits his gifts in the passenger seat. For their Secret Santa, he got a colleague called Gunter, and didn’t personally speak to him often enough to know what he’d like. He had, however, witnessed him drinking a couple of times, and figured a bottle of whiskey couldn’t go amiss.

 

The other gift he had was for Eren. He’d see Hanji, Erwin, Mike, and Petra all nearer Christmas to give them their gifts—no doubt they’d drop by and interrupt his dinner with his mother like they always did. Every year, without fail, they bring balloons and banners and Levi’d be lying if he didn’t say he felt somewhat touched by the action. His mother’s always a good sport about it, too—offering to make Hanji’s mashed potatoes the way she likes them and exchanging ideas with Erwin. She always tells Mike ‘if I was twenty years younger’.

 

But he didn’t know when he’d next see Eren—probably in the new year, or at the New Year’s party Hanji was throwing. He was absolutely punctual when giving gifts, and didn’t want to intrude on Eren’s Christmas with his family, so a week early, rather than late, it was.

 

His usual parking space is free, and he swings in without having to straighten up. He’s arrived early enough to put his gift on the table without being seen, and late enough that he isn’t the only one there.

 

Hani tackles him in the doorway and spills that Petra got him as her Secret Santa.

 

“Hanji.” Petra deflates, shoulders sagging underneath her flowy white dress. Her exhale says she’s used to it, because it’s typical Hanji behaviour, but like she was still hopeful that this would be the year Hanji _wouldn’t_ tell everyone.

 

Levi rolls his eyes. “It’s—”

 

“I got new beakers!”

 

Only Hanji would look so excited.

 

Erwin beams behind her. “I didn’t know what else to get her.”

 

“Is this what we do now?” Levi asks. “Take the secret out of Santa?”

 

It’s what they do now.

 

Hanji tells everyone when they arrive. It’s the first thing she says to them before hello and giving them directions towards the alcohol table. As Gunter arrives, Levi tries to send her death-glares, but either she doesn’t care, she’s used to them, or she’s becoming reckless.

 

Gunter doesn’t seem to mind, he comes up to Levi and thanks him, then adds that as if he’s going to open his bottle here—Auruo would have his mouth around it before anyone else. Levi can believe that.

 

Before he leaves, he nods the bottle towards Levi. “Tell your boyfriend I was askin’ after him.”

 

He almost crushes the melon ball between his thumb and forefinger. Fucking Hanji.

 

The evening is pleasant regardless, and Levi enjoys spending time with his friends. He plays multiple games of rock, paper, scissors just to satisfy Mike and his theory that his nose can sense things before they happen, eyes Petra up suspiciously when she refuses any type of alcohol, and distracts Hanji whilst Erwin goes hunting for the Secret Santa list—they both have a theory that she staged the entire thing.

 

He tries not to be “that guy” and flock right towards Eren when he notices that he’s arrived with a couple of friends—he still has friendships himself that he has to uphold and he would never jeopardise them for another person—but when Erwin goes to dance with his long-term girlfriend, and Petra and Auruo are in deep, personal conversation, and Hanji is hosting her own party, he sees no reason not to greet him.

 

Eren looks a little different than usual, a little cleaner, and brushed up. He’s wearing a white shirt that his mother probably ironed for him, but he still looks trendy and young with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and the longest parts of his hair sweeping against the collar.

 

“Hello.”

 

From closer up, Levi can see Eren has three gifts tucked underneath his jacket.

 

“Levi!” Eren stops gazing around the room, cracks his lips into a smile. “I’m glad you’re here! I was hoping you’d be.” He sticks his tongue to the corner of his mouth as he tries to arrange his gifts.

 

“Why is that?”

 

He holds out one of the gift bags for him, cheeks creased into dimples. “Because I have presents. One for your birthday, one for Christmas.”

 

Levi takes the red, snowflake designed bag from him and feels the weight of it, his heart jumping. Suddenly a scarf feels like a terribly shitty gift to buy someone.

 

“You didn’t have to.” He says, and he means it, but it still makes him feel appreciated. “I have a gift for you, as well.” He leads Eren over to the window ledge that’s wide and close to the ground, presenting the perfect seat. A couple of people are at the other end of it, sitting and chatting and having drinks. Levi’s coat is on the hangers at the side of the window, his gift concealed under it. He pulls it out and passes it to Eren.

 

“Ooh,” Eren breathes over it. “Fancy box.” He comments. He wiggles it for a moment, then starts pulling the rich purple ribbon away without prompt. Sensing that he’s allowed to, Levi opens his bag and peeks inside as well. The unmistakable ring of a ceramic mug stares back at him, sitting on top of some black cloth folded at the bottom.

 

“No way,” he hears Eren’s amused tone. The box is forgotten about in his hands, and he’s whipping the other end of the thick, navy scarf around him. “Shit, this is _so_ soft. I don’t even have any scarves.”

 

Levi snorts. He almost wants to poke Eren’s nose. “I figured as much.” He pulls out the mug by the rim and turns it around so he can see the pattern. It says ‘ick’ in capitals, and the handle is shaped like a capital D. He stifles a chuckle.

 

Eren’s watching him expectantly, two rows of his teeth showing. “You like those kind of mugs, right?”

 

“I do.” Levi confirms. He rather feels like he has the perfect set now—one that says dick. One that says cunt. He’ll have to hide both from his mother.

 

“I had to ask Hanji for a little help for the last one.” He offers to hold the mug whilst Levi fishes out the black cloth.

 

It’s a t-shirt that says ‘ding dong, your opinion is wrong’.

 

Levi smiles despite himself. He forgets that the entire room could be watching him. Eren gives off that feeling—the one that makes you feel like you’re both alone. “These are perfect.” He admits. “Thank you, Eren.”

 

“Welcome. I hope your birthday is awesome.” They chat some more about Eren’s plans for his twenty second, if Levi will have a party for Petra, and then they try to guess Hanji’s age. They conclude: thirties in physical, five at heart.

 

At the big window, some raindrops starting to splatter against it make him blink. Then he catches it at the same time as Eren—not raindrops. Items of a fluffier nature.

 

“Oh, my god!” Eren yelps excitedly, jumping up from the window ledge. He presses his face against the window like a kid, eyes wide and absolutely fascinated. “It’s snowing!”

 

Levi smiles at his reaction. “Looks like it.”

 

“I was hoping it’d snow this year! Mike has never been in the snow. Oh, I can’t wait until he sees it.”

 

How fucking precious—he’s not even excited about the snow itself, he’s more excited to witness his dog play around in it for the first time. As if Levi’s not already sold.

 

“Mm.” Levi hums. “Maybe I’ll take Petra out into it, too.” He already has a harness for her, just in case, but the thought of the snow being too deep for her to even walk in makes him internally snicker.

 

“You should.” Eren grins at him. “Send me pictures!

 

“I will.” He promised. Recently, Eren has been sending him some. Levi hands-down refuses to get a Snapchat, whatever that is, but he did know what they looked like and how it functioned (briefly) and he couldn’t help but feel tingles in his tummy that Eren screenshotted all of his own to replay to Levi. Eren gave him the same sense of belonging that he received from his friends—always trying to keep him in the loop, doing their best to invite him places even if he’s being a fun-sucker.

 

Part of Levi asks himself: does he really want to possibly ruin that? His friendship with Eren?

 

He thinks about that when Eren goes off to socialise and show his friends his new scarf, and Levi pretends to go back to his own friends, but instead, he grabs his coat, a little pit of misery growing inside him.

 

It’s not that he thinks his entire relationship with Eren will be over if, somehow, his feelings come to light. Eren is nice—Levi tries to remind himself that this is the boy who gave over his last penny to make sure a girl got home safe—it’s unlikely he’ll cut all contact with him and think he’s gross.

 

Outside of the work building, Levi finds the driest bench and sits on it. No, it wouldn’t happen like that.

 

It’d become awkward. It’d happen gradually, which might even be more painful than the first, more brutal option. Their friendship wouldn’t split down the middle, it’d dissolve, like a bitter-tasting tablet in water.

 

First, Eren would act like everything was okay. Then he’d stop coming downstairs every so often. He’d answer his texts with ‘sorry, I’m busy’, or those one-word answers that seem to make every teenager go berserk. He’d send Jean down a couple of times instead. Months would pass. It’d be like they never had a friendship.

 

Levi would look back on that McDonalds in his car, his eyes would drift between his two favourite mugs, Eren coming to his mind.

 

Eventually, he’d be just another face in the elevator. Levi would put that shirt at the bottom of his drawer, try to tell himself Hanji bought it for him. He’d delete Eren’s number. He’d buy a new laptop manual.

 

He’d go back to that routine. There’d be nothing to look forward to.

 

Levi doesn’t even want to think about that—he’s been in that place before, that horrible place of feeling simultaneously empty-headed and so full of thoughts he couldn’t breathe. Everyone had one of those loves, didn’t they? —those agonising, unrequited loves that made you stop breathing and made you cry so hard you clutched at your own chest, trying to tell your heart ‘it’s okay, it’s okay, we’ll survive this’.

 

Now that he’s thought of the consequences, Levi really doesn’t want to be in love.

 

And it would be even worse than that—because not everyone’s unrequited love is an Eren Jaeger.

 

God, he’s so fed-up.

 

Fed-up of being on his own, fed-up of not looking forward to anything. Fed-up of predictability.

 

The snow and the dark only make him even more down. The sky is cloudless and inky with white specks. He stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets, is about to get up to return to the party when—

 

“Hey, I saw you from the window when I came back. Everything okay?” Eren has his own jacket on, the scarf Levi bought him wrapped around his neck. It’s so thick it can cover his mouth, and he talks from underneath it. It somehow makes his eyes look even bigger.

 

“Yes,” Levi lies, settling back down. “I was just watching the snow.”

 

Eren doesn’t even catch on. He smiles and hops over a stank and sits right next to Levi, his chin jutting over the scarf as he looks up to the sky, squinting.

 

“It’s so great, isn’t it? I mean.” He draws back a bit. “I know it sucks when it’s all slushy and gross and driving in it is the fucking bane of my entire existence, but it’s nice like this.”

 

The road in front of them is white and dotted now. “Mm.” Levi hums. “I wonder if it will lie.”

 

“I hope it does.” Eren says. “I’d rather have snow than ice.”

 

Levi doesn’t answer him, doesn’t want to spoil the purity of Eren contemplating each single snowflake before it joins the others on the ground. His nose becomes red again. Levi takes his hands out of his pockets and wipes them against his thighs so he doesn’t touch it.

 

“I love the snow.” He sits back against the bench like he’s done for now. He tilts his head to the side, regards something else instead. “I like the way it melts if you hold it for long. Like,” he glances at Levi. “Even the coldest thing can soften.”

 

He doesn’t know if he’s egotistical, or if that just eerily sounds like him.

 

“I had another gift for you today.” Eren starts, looking away. The colour of his nose spreads to his cheeks. “I just didn’t. I mean, depending on… you… I didn’t know if it’d be a gift or a total nightmare.” He laughs at the end.

 

Levi’s eyebrows become friends in the middle of his forehead. “Any gift is a gift. You didn’t have to buy me anything else, Eren.”

 

A smile not quite happy, not quite sad quirks at the end of Eren’s lips. “It isn’t something I had to buy. It’s just something I—have.” He exhales, his breath marking the air.

 

Looking away, Levi swallows. The conversation has turned—something. Eren feels closer, Levi starts feeling insecure about his face.

 

He feels something on his hand, too.

 

When he blinks and looks down, Eren’s hand is against his, pinky against pinky. It nudges around a few times, then worms its way underneath his own. Eren spreads his fingers and slips them between Levi’s.

 

His breath catches somewhere in his throat—it could be. Anything. It might not even be a romantic gesture. But the way Eren’s skin feels against his own, how his fingers feel so calming and heart-wrenching around Levi’s, it makes him feel so wanted and so terrified. He feels his heart thumping at his ribcage, begging to be let out.

 

“Levi,” Eren’s voice is much softer, as soft as the snow looks in front of them as it continues to fall and lie. It’s different, it’s not loud. It’s intimate. It’s something Levi’s never heard—from anyone.

 

When he makes eye contact with Eren, his eyebrows are slanted into concern and honesty is in his eyes and something Levi can’t comprehend is on his lips.

 

“I just.” He swallows, visibly. “I—” His eyes take a fall to the bottom of Levi’s face.

 

They rise back up. “I think about you all the time.”

 

Every inch of Levi’s skin shivers and the temperature has absolutely nothing to do with it.

 

He wishes he could tell Eren that he thinks about him too. When he’s making dinner, when he’s about to go to bed, when he’s about to go to work, when he sees red flannels, when he sees Mike, when he sees his kitchen knives, when he sees himself, when he watches zombie films. He sees Eren in almost everything.

 

“Actually, I think I’m falling in love with you.”

 

Levi’s lips threaten to break into a smile. He wants to tell him that, too. He’s sure his heart is free from his ribcage and running off somewhere. Everything feels blissful and delightful and scary all at once. His fingers twitch against Eren’s.

 

Before he can return the sentiment, admit his own feelings, and properly ask Eren to be something significant to him, he’s muted.

 

Eren inches forward so much that Levi knows what’s coming. He braces himself for it, shuts his eyes and leaves his lips parted.

 

He hasn’t been kissed in so, so long.

 

By the feel of things, letting go of his hand is not an option for Eren when they kiss. It’s not just his lips Levi feels—he feels the upper part of his lip, his nose pressed into the corner of his own, his breath mingling with the air that hits his cheek. There are parts of his hair that are tickling his eyelashes.

 

It’s wonderful.

 

He goes to pull away, makes the soft little smacking sound and everything, but Levi chases him the extra centimetre and connects their lips again. Eren turns around properly on the bench, bringing up one knee to stabilise himself whilst keeping their lips attached, like the world would end if they didn’t. Maybe it would. It feels like it could. He takes his hand away from Levi’s and lays it on the side of his face, the extra coldness making Levi flinch on the inside.

 

This time, when Eren removes his lips from Levi’s, he hovers there. Levi feels the bite of his breath on his tongue. When he seems sure Levi won’t chase him again, he flutters his eyes open and they’re glazed and only become more beautiful as he pulls away.

 

The first thing Levi thinks is how excruciating it would be to have to get over Eren after they’ve kissed.

 

Hot, haggard breaths come out of Eren’s mouth. “You don’t have to say anything.” He rushes, getting up from the bench. Levi tries to stop him with a hand—that hand he held so perfectly—but he’s already bouncing nervously on his heels. “I’m—if that was super inappropriate and you didn’t like it then that’s totally okay. I just wanted you to know that—that someone loves you. That I love you. You don’t have to say it back. You just had to know.”

 

And then he runs off. Levi watches him, lips still parted, eyes still glossed over. He can see the new footprints Eren’s making in the snow as he heads back to the building.

 

He never wants to wash his mouth again.

 

Levi sleeps in his new t-shirt that night. His thoughts flood back to hopelessness when he has no messages, no calls, no photographs from Eren—what if he regrets his decision to kiss Levi and say those words? What if it was a moment of misjudgement? What if he decides that he doesn’t want those feelings anymore?

 

He thumbs Petra’s forehead to sleep. His eyes are finding new strokes of paint in his ceiling. One arm is thrown behind his head. It seems so simple to feel happy about Eren’s confession, but Levi’s a worrier, and it feels like being told ‘I love you’ only brings forth a new box of shit to worry about. He doesn’t know where he stands. He doesn’t know what protocol is. There’s nobody here to give him instructions.

 

**18 December 2016 To:** Eren Jaeger

_Sorry if you’re asleep, I think we should /_

 

Delete message.

 

This isn’t something he should say over a phone.  

 

All this time, he’s wished Eren would kiss him, ask him out, tell him he thinks of him as more than a friend. And now it’s actually happened. And Levi’s—he’s so lost.

 

He doesn’t want to ruin Eren’s life. He doesn’t want to be that older guy Eren once dated, but it didn’t quite work out. He doesn’t want to feel the pressures of a relationship with a distance in age. He doesn’t want to meet his sister and have her hate him. He doesn’t want to love Eren for months, a year, maybe multiple years, and then have to get over him anyway. He doesn’t want to meet his parents and have Eren go through the same thing he did. He doesn’t want to—

 

But there are so many things he _does_ want. Seeing the sunshine before anyone else in the morning because it lives in Eren’s eyes. Watching Mike and Petra interact and realise, probably begrudgingly, that they have to put up with each other because their dads are in love. Missing Eren when he visits Germany. Making him breakfast, making sure he’s fed. Wrapping scarves around him before work, because he’ll probably forget. Waking up with someone beside him for the first time in his life.

 

Levi looks at the snow still falling outside his window. It’s so quiet, and yet makes such a big impact. That’s kind of what love feels like.

 

At some point, Petra’s snoring puts him to sleep.

 

#

 

 “Santa Claws won’t come if you don’t sleep, Petra.”

 

He tells her off with his hands on his hips, Christmas pyjamas slung low around them. She only stares back up at him, eyes big and blue and beautiful. He’s trying to get her away from the living room for long enough to build her a new cat tree, but it doesn’t look like it’s happening because she’s the nosiest little cat in the entire world.

 

Before her, he wasn’t so into Christmas decorations and the whole festive holiday theme, mostly he’d only do it to satisfy his mother and friends, but for her, he’d put in some effort. A lot of toys and treats he’d gradually bought her in the past two months were wrapped and against the wall, as well as other gifts he’d to give to people. The stocking he’d pinned up for her was dragged to the floor, and became something she loved to snuggle and hide in. He’d left out two dishes of milk, one for her, and one for ‘Santa Claws’. She’d fucking lapped up both.

 

A knock-knock at his door sends her away from him and towards it. She waits patiently for him to open the door, tail swishing once or twice behind her. Every single time, Levi thinks. She knows she can’t go outside. And yet.

 

He scoops her up, her expression becoming mildly alarmed, and opens the door.

 

“Eren.” It comes tumbling out of his mouth before he can catch it.

 

Eren, fluffy-haired and red-nosed, gives him a weak smile. “Hey.”

 

Levi checks the clock behind the door. “It’s late. Why are you out so late?” He steps aside to let Eren in, wants to grab him a towel to dry his hair and a fuzzy blanket to warm his cheeks. But he doesn’t know if it’s his place to do that—almost a week has gone by, and they haven’t even talked. Every single day, Levi has wanted to text him, march over to his house, video-call him (he’d even considered downloading the goddamn Snapchat), but he’d ended up laying down his phone, telling himself: if Eren wanted to contact him, he would.

 

Stepping carefully inside the door, Eren spares a glance behind him. “I took a walk. I’ve been walking for a while.”

 

Levi puts Petra on the floor the moment his door is closed. She sniffs at Eren, walks around him and tries to point him with scent recognition.

 

“At nearly eleven?” He arches a dark eyebrow. He doesn’t care if he’s in love with the boy—he’s concerned about his wellbeing. His eyes are watering, the tips of his ears are red and probably aching, and his face looks raw, like someone’s slapped him.

 

“I just wanted to see you. Apologise.”

 

“Apologise?” He echoes, a scuff of his foot reminding him of how he’s dressed. Fuzzy socks, Christmas pyjamas. Shit. He folds his arms over the penguin on his chest. That doesn’t matter right now. “For what?”

 

Eren inhales. “Just—for y’know. If I embarrassed you, or made you uncomfortable. For… saying those things.”

 

“Feelings are nothing to apologise for.” Levi replies, mouth staying slack so he can tell Eren he feels the same. His pride stops that right there. He should know how Eren feels first. “Do you... – I was wondering if you still felt the same as last week.”

 

Eren’s eyebrows furrow. “Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I? —Unless you don’t want me to, then I can try to control them, keep them under—”

 

“I don’t want you to do that.” Levi interrupts. “I’d prefer it if you kept the feelings.” He unfolds his arms, letting them hang by his side. “I have them, too.”

 

Eren blinks. “You have? The feelings?”

 

Levi frowns. “Yes.”

 

“For me?”

 

“Yes, for you, Eren.”

 

“What? No way.”

 

“What?”

 

Eren fidgets, looking aside. “I didn’t think you’d—feel the same. Are you sure?”

 

Levi almost smiles. A corner of his lip does twitch. He tries to hide that penguin again. “I’m fairly positive.”

 

Eren exhales like he can’t believe it and gives a crooked smile. “Can I kiss you again, then?”

 

Directing his eyes south, Levi points at his jacket, snowflakes turned to raindrops on it. “Not with that on. I’m ready for bed.”

 

“I know.” Eren gestures to his outfit. “Nice pyjamas.” He unzips his jacket and with less than minimal effort, folds it and leaves the warm side on the arm of Levi’s sofa. He doesn’t unwrap his scarf, just pulls it over his head and drapes it somewhere behind him without a care in the world.

 

Then he takes a couple of steps forward, until he’s so close Levi can smell his scent and feel the chill radiating from him. The tips of his fingers are red and uncomfortably cold when he presses a hand to Levi’s jaw.

 

“Thanks for feeling the same.” Eren murmurs. He leaves no time for Levi to reply, slots their lips together and makes him feel indebted to his luck even though it’s usually overwhelmingly bad. He thanks whatever he did in a past life.

 

Either Eren’s coldness spreads to Levi’s lips, or Levi’s heat spreads to Eren’s, because after three kisses, there’s a feeling of balance between their mouths. It’s no longer alarmingly freezing, it’s nice. Eren holds him close and tilts his head different ways and Levi loops his arms under and up Eren’s shoulders.

 

Petra rolls her tongue. “Meow!”

 

He tries to ignore her, feeling the tug of Eren’s lips as he smiles against him. They only get a moment more to kiss before he hears her trilling and feels some different kind of tugs at his pyjama pants.

 

“Petra, no.” Levi pulls the waistband of his pyjamas back up. She looks absolutely horrified that she’d ever be ignored when there are two people in the room. She probably thinks that means double the attention.

 

“Aw, are you happy to see me?” Eren crouches down to rub at her head.

 

Levi tries not to roll his eyes and steps away from both of them, looking behind him at Eren. “Do you feel like helping me build a tree?”

 

#

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to point out any errors (I think there may be some, although I've edited quite a lot), but mostly enjoy : )

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please let me know of any errors. You can also find me on tumblr @ ackrmanns : )


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